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ECONOMICS  AND  POLITICS. 

EDITED  BY 
RICHARD  T.   ELY,  Ph.D.,  LL.D. 


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SOCIAL    THEORY 


A  GROUPING  OF  SOCIAL  FACTS 
AND  PRINCIPLES 


BY 


JOHN    BASCOM 

Author  of  "Ethics,"  "Sociology,"  etc. 


NEW   YORK 

THOMAS   Y.  CROWELL   &  COMPANY 

PUBLISHERS 


"&3 


Copyright,   1895, 
Bv  Thomas  Y.  Crovvell  &  Company. 


GENERAL 


TYPOGRAPHY    BY    C.    J.    PETERS   &   SON, 
BOSTON. 


THIS     VOLUME 

IS    INSCRIBED   TO 

EMMA    CURTISS    BASCOM, 

AVlKi.SK  thoughts  on  its  themes  have  kept 

COMPANY    WITH    MY    THOUGHTS 
THESE    MANY    YEARS. 


PREFACE. 


The  present  volume  is  independent  of  the  author's 
previous  volume,  entitled  "  Sociology."  It  is  far  more 
comprehensive,  is  for  the  most  part  diverse,  and,  so  far 
as  it  offers  the  same  material,  presents  it  in  a  new  form 
and  in  different  relations.  The  volume  is  designed  for 
the  general  student  of  Sociology  rather  than  for  the 
specialist.  The  references  it  contains  are  made  both  as 
giving  authority  and  as  drawing  attention  to  co-ordinate, 
and  often  popular,  discussions.  The  reader  is  not  at 
liberty  to  infer,  in  each  case,  that  the  persons  mentioned 
support  the  view  of  the  author.  As  there  are  full  bibli- 
ographies of  Sociology,  there  has  been  no  effort  to  add 
another.  The  book  is  both  theoretical  and  practical. 
The  problems  discussed  are  offered  for  the  sake  of  the 
principles  involved  in  them,  and  the  principles  are  urged 
for  the  sake  of  the  problems  which  come  under  them. 
It  is  prompted  by  a  progressive  temper,  and,  it  is 
hoped,  will  awaken,  correct,  and  guide  the  same  tem- 
per in  others. 


CONTENTS. 


INTRODUCTION. 

CHAPTER   I. 

Claims  of  Sociology —  page 

§  1.    The  Comprehensiveness  of  Sociology 3 

2.    English  and  American  Society 5 

CHAPTER   II. 

Definitions,     Divisions,     Preliminary     Facts     and 
Principles  — 

§  1.    Definitions 8 

2.  Divisions 9 

3.  Groups       . 11 

4.  Definitions 13 

5.  Facts  of  Attainment 14 

6.  Influences  operative  on  Organic  Forces       ....  16 

7.  Inheritance 19 

8.  The  Things  implied  in  Inheritance 21 

9.  National  Type  and  External  Circumstances    ...  24 
10.    Growth  of  Society  a  Movahle  Equilibrium      ...  28 


PART  I.  —  Customs  as  a  Factor  in  Sociology. 
CHAPTER   I. 

Definitions  and  Divisions — Social  Customs  — 

§  1.   Nature  of  Customs 33 

2.  Relation  to  Progress ;!4 

3.  Divisions  of  Customs  —  The  Family 37 

4.  Marriage 40 

ix 


X  CONTENTS. 

PAGE 

5.  Relation  of  Parents  and  Children 41 

6.  Relation  of  Children  to  One  an  Other 43 

7.  The  Family  the  School  of  Social  Relations      ...  44 

8.  Subjection  of  Women 46 

9.  Rights  gained  by  Women 47 

10.  Political  Rights  of  Women 51 

11.  Objections  to  these  Rights 54 

12.  Divorce 59 

13.  Evils  of  Divorce 68 

14.  Customs  which  pertain  to  Classes 73 

15.  The  Negro  Problem 74 

16.  Manners 76 

17.  Amusements 79 

CHAPTER   II. 
Civic  Customs  — 

§  1.    Four  Forms 83 

2.  Economic  Customs 84 

3.  Constitutional  Customs 86 

4.  Judicial  Customs S7 

5.  Administrative  Customs 88 

CHAPTER   III. 
Religious  Customs  — 

§  1.    Two  Forms 91 

2.  Functions  performed  by  them 92 

3.  Modification  of  Keligious  Customs 93 

4.  Conservative  Force  of  Religious  Customs   ....  94 

CHAPTER   IV. 
Customs  and  Reforms  — 

§  1.    Part  played  by  Customs  in  Social  Development  .     .  96 

2.  Reform 98 

3.  Instruments  of  Reform 100 

4.  The  Press,  its  Service 103 

5.  The  Press,  its  Evils 106 

6.  The  Causes  of  its  Failures 109 

7.  Its  Relation  to  Society 114 


CONTENTS.  XI 

PART   II.  —  Economics  as  a  Factor  in  Sociology. 

CHAPTER    I.  page 

The    Nature    of    Economics    and    Its    Relation  to 
Sociology  — 

§  1.    Nature  of  Economics 119 

2.  Economics  a  Deductive  Science 120 

3.  Two  Schools  .  * 121 

4.  Relation  of  Economics  and  Sociology 122 

5.  First  Example,  Rent 122 

0.    Second  Example,  Law  of  Malthus 125 

CHAPTER   II. 
The  Postulates  of  Economics  — 

§  1.    First  Postulate 130 

2.  Failures  of  the  Postulate 135 

3.  Second  Postulate 138 

4.  Third  Postulate 140 

5.  Nature  of  Competition 145 

6.  Functions  of  Competition 148 

7.  Limitations  of  Competition 152 

8.  Competition  as  a  Social  Law 163 

CHAPTER   III. 

Social  Growth  in  the  Several  Forms  of  Produc- 
tion.    Agriculture  — 

§  1.   Divisions 166 

2.  The  Relations  of  Agriculture 166 

3.  Tenure  of  Land 107 

4.  Holdings  of  Land 171 

5.  Socialism 175 

6.  A  Single  Tax 181 

CHAPTER   IV. 
Manufacture  — 

§  1.    Changes  in  the  Form  of  Manufacture 191 

2.  Consequent  Losses  in  Society 193 

3.  Consequent  Gains  in  Society 196 

4.  Hours  of  Labor 109 


Xll  CONTENTS. 

CHAPTER  V. 

COMM  E  BCE  —  P  A  i ;  E 

§  1.    Increased  Rapidity  of  Commerce 205 

2.  Growth  of  Cities :  208 

3.  Social  Changes 210 

4.  Social  Results 214 

5.  Remedies 217 

CHAPTER  VI. 
Distribution  — 

§  1.    Ruling  Principle  in  Distribution 220 

2.  Four  Classes  in  Distribution  —  Rent 222 

3.  Capital 223 

4.  Management  and  Labor 224 

5.  The  Amount  under  Contention  in  Distribution  .     .  226 

6.  Governing  Idea  the  Public  Welfare 230 

7.  Wage-system  in  Distribution    . 232 

8.  The  Labor-Movement 235 

0.    Effects  of  the  Labor-Movement 237 

10.  Evils  of  the  Labor-Movement 245 

11.  Co-operation 250 

12.  Profit-Sharing 254 

13.  Saving  and  Loan  Associations,  Savings-Banks   .     .  257 

14.  Gains  of  Workmen 261 

15.  Inequalities  in  Distribution 268 

16.  Social  Principles  involved  in  Distribution  ....  271 

CHAPTER   VII. 
Exchange  — 

§1.    The  Doctrine  of  Protection 276 

2.  A  Sound  Currency,  Quality 278 

3.  Quantity 283 

PART    III.  —  Civics  as  a  Factor  in  Sociology. 

CHAPTER   I. 

The  Theory  and  Functions  of  the  State  — 

§1.    Relation  of  Civics 289 

2.    Rightfulness  of  the  State 290 


CONTENTS. 


Xlll 


3. 

4. 


Three  Tests  of  Rightfulness 


Functions  of  the  State 

5.    Four  .Stages  of  Development  in  the  State 


PAGE 

295 
297 
301 


CHAPTER   II. 

Development  in  the  Duties  of  the  State 

§  1.  Four  Directions  of  Development 

2.  Three  Forms  of  Law  .     .     . 

3.  Municipal  Law,  Judicial  Law 

4.  Statute  Law  .... 

5.  Administration  of  Law 

6.  The  Miscarriage  of  Law 
1.  The  Remedies     .     .     . 

8.  Forms  in  Administration 

9.  A  Higher  Temper  in  Society 


306 
311 
313 
315 
316 
319 
■■',21 
326 
328 


CHAPTER   III. 
Crime  and  Pauperism  — 

§  1.    Criminal  Law 332 

2.  Uncertainty  of  Punishment 336 

3.  Local  Option 337 

4.  Law  and  Order  Leagues 338 

5.  Pauperism 340 

6.  Ohligations  of  the  State 342 

7.  Growth  of  Crime 345 

CHAPTER   IV. 
Education  — 

§  1.    Education  as  a  Means  of  Equality 351 

2.  Moral  Training :;57 

3.  Education  and  War ;!C>2 

CHAPTER   V. 

The  Enforcement  of  New  Duties  between  Citizens  — 

§1.    Evolution  in  the  State 364 

2.    Concentration  of  Power 305 


XIV  CONTENTS. 

PAGE 

3.  Need  of  Additional  Control 365 

4.  Railways 307 

5.  Offences  of  Railways  against  Stockholders      .     .     .  375 

6.  Against  the  Public,  Freights 379 

7.  Discrimination  between  Persons 387 

8.  Discrimination  between  Places 389 

9.  Interstate  Commerce  Commission 397 

CHAPTER  VI. 
New  Duties  in  the  State  — 

§  1.   Need  of  assuming  New  Duties,  Trusts 401 

2.  Causes  which  have  given  rise  to  Trusts      ....  403 

3.  Gains  and  Losses  incident  to  them 405 

4.  Remedies 409 

5.  Patents 414 

6.  Water-Supply,  Light-Supply,  Street  Railways     .     .  416 

CHAPTER   VII. 
The  State  in  the  Exercise  of  its  Rights  — 

§  1.    Injustices  in  Taxation 422 

2.  Principles  on  Which  Taxes  should  be  laid  ....  424 

3.  Subordinate  Principles 430 

4.  Forms  of  Taxes,  Direct  Taxes 432 

5.  Indirect  Taxes 441 

6.  Independent  Considerations  mingled  with  Taxation,  444 

7.  Taxation  in  England  and  in  the  United  States  .     .  449 

CHAPTER  VIII. 

The  State  as  administered  by  Political  Parties  — 

§  1.    The  Necessity  of  Parties 453 

2.  Two  Methods  of  the  Transfer  of  Power      ....  456 

3.  Evils  of  Government  by  Parties 458 

CHAPTER  IX. 
International  Law  — 

§  1.    Method  in  which  it  has  arisen 474 

2.   War 475 


CONTENTS.  XV 

PART   IV.  —  Ethics  as  a  Factor  in  Sociology. 
CHAPTER   I. 

Nature  of  Ethical  Law —  page 

§  1.    Source  of  Ethical  Law 4s  1 

2.  Fields  of  Moral  Action,  Relation  to  Customs  .     .     .  483 

3.  Relation  to  Economics 484 

4.  Relation  to  Civics 4U1 

5.  Justice 493 

6.  Postulates  of  Justice 494 

7.  Development  of  the  Idea  of  Justice 495 

8.  Benevolence 497 

9.  Duties  of  the  Citizen 497 

10.    Duties  of  the  Ruler 499 


PART    V.  —  Religion  as  a  Factor  in  Sociology. 

CHAPTER   I. 
Gkowth  of  Religion  — 

§  1.    Growth  of  the  Idea  of  God 505 

2.  Universality  of  Religion 508 

3.  Growth  of  the  Conception  of  God 509 

4.  Suffering  and  Evolution 510 

5.  Spiritual  Growth  and  Evolution 511 

6.  The  Social  Force  of  Religion  and  its  Evolution  .     .  513 

7.  Religion    and    Customs,    Economics,    Civics,    and 

Ethics 518 

8.  Functions  of  the  Pulpit 524 

CHAPTER   II. 
Sociology  and  Evolution  — 

§  1.    Evolution  in  Society  a  Completing  Term    ....  527 

2.  Postulates  of  Social  Evolution 528 

3.  Evidence  of  Social  Evolution 529 

4.  Laws  of  Social  Evolution 531 


INTRODUCTION, 


INTRODUCTION. 


CHAPTER   I. 
CLAIMS    OF    SOCIOLOGY. 

§  1.  Sociology  claims  the  attention  of  the  thoughtful 
and  the  educated  man  for  a  variety  of  reasons.  The 
other  forms  of  knowledge  derive  much  of  their  value, 
directly  or  indirectly,  from  their  relation  to  social  inter- 
ests. Science  puts  a  great  variety  of  powers  at  the  ser- 
vice of  society,  and  the  ultimate  value  of  its  discoveries 
depends  chiefly  on  the  manner  in  which  they  affect  the 
relations  of  men  one  to  another.  If,  like  the  invention 
of  gunpowder,  they  tend  to  level  down  classes,  or,  like 
the  invention  of  soap,  to  level  up  the  habits  of  men, 
they  become  direct  factors  in  that  final,  comprehensive 
product  —  the  public  welfare. 

Art  unites  itself  closely  to  science,  extends  and  ap- 
plies its  powers,  and  puts  them  in  most  immediate  min- 
istration to  society.  The  industrial  classes  will  owe  the 
degree  in  which  they  minister  to  men,  and  the  measure 
of  their  own  enjoyments,  to  the  forms  of  labor  which 
the  useful  arts  assign  them.  The  invention  of  the 
cotton-gin  was  a  pregnant  event  in  social  states  and 
changes.  It  strengthened  the  hold  of  slavery  in  Amer- 
ica, and  helped  to  revolutionize  society  in  England. 

Nor  can  philosophy  lay  upon  itself  any  better  labor 

3 


4  INTli  OD  UCTION. 

than  that  of  a  more  penetrative  and  beneficent  discus- 
sion of  the  rights  of  men,  and  of  indicating  the  new 
dependencies  which  the  progress  of  society  makes  pos- 
sible and  demands.  We  may  well  study  Sociology, 
therefore,  because,  more  than  any  other  branch  of- 
knowledge,  it  gathers  up  and  knits  together  our  various 
attainments. 

It  also  claims  attention  because  the  forms  of  action 
which  pertain  to  conduct  and  character  move  forward 
toward  fulfilment  and  harmony  in  society.  The  acqui- 
sition of  wealth,  good  government,  ethical  law,  and  re- 
ligious faith,  all  find  their  common  field  in  society. 
Here  they  commingle,  in  fortunate  or  unfortunate  re- 
sults, according  to  the  wisdom  and  good-will  with  which 
they  are  directed.  Sociology  is  not  simply  a  practical 
study ;  it  is  the  sum  and  substance  of  practical  inter- 
ests, high  and  low,  developed  among  men.  AYhat  a  man 
gets  and  does  and  enjoys,  he  must  get,  do,  and  enjoy 
in  society.  The  law  of  all  achievement  is  found  in  the 
elevation  of  men  in  that  composite  life  they  lead  one 
with  another. 

An  urgent  reason  why  the  patriotic  mind  should  give 
Sociology  speedy  attention  is  found  in  the  many  social 
questions,  of  every  degree  of  moment,  which  are  being 
broached  everywhere.  They  are  answered,  wisely  or 
unwisely,  by  thousands,  the  answer  looking  to  action. 
The  framework  of  society  is  undergoing  rapid  changes 
in  obedience  to  this  thought.  No  man  can  excuse  him- 
self from  taking  part  in  these  inquiries,  any  more  than 
he  can  escape  participation  in  their  results.  We  cannot 
look  forward  to  any  large  and  general  safety  otherwise 
than   through   a   just    and    generous  response   to  these 


ENGLISH  AND   AMERICAN  SOCIETY.  5 

manifold  claims  of  men  which  are  pressing  upon  us. 
Society  must  take  to  itself  higher  duties,  achieve  more 
complete  organization,  or  lose  by  strife  and  disintegra- 
tion some  portion  of  the  good  already  won.  It  is  not  a 
time  in  which  indifference  or  negligence  is  at  all  bear- 
able. Our  boat  is  in  the  rapids,  and  we  must  answer  at 
once  for  its  safety. 

§  2.  While  the  constitution  of  men  and  the  forms  of 
society  present  sufficient  agreement  to  give  occasion  to 
general  principles  in  Sociology,  these  principles  are  ex- 
tremely variable  in  their  practical  uses.  The  particular 
stage  of  development,  and  the  peculiar  conditions  of  each 
community,  define  for  it  the  economic  and  civic  relations, 
and  even  the  ethical  duties,  that  are  immediately  perti- 
nent to  its  wants.  Every  line  of  action,  therefore,  must 
stand  connected  with  a  definite  set  of  circumstances  on 
whose  character  its  fitness  depends.  We  shall  discuss 
the  principles  of  Sociology  chiefly  in  connection  with  the 
phases  of  progress  offered  by  our  own  and  by  English 
society..  Our  work,  by  this  method,  will  at  once  be  safer 
and  more  pertinent  to  our  wants. 

Society  in  England  and  in  the  United  States  presents, 
in  its  operative  causes,  an  advanced  development.  Eco- 
nomic and  civic  forces  are  especially  vigorous.  A  greater 
variety  of  social  questions  arise  here  than  elsewhere, 
and  they  are  answered  more  freely  and  more  directly 
under  the  influence  of  the  principles  involved  in  them. 
Though  we  are  always  exposed  to  the  danger  of  suppos- 
ing our  conclusions  to  be  possessed  of  a  wider  applica- 
tion than  belongs  to  them,  Ave  are  not  as  likely  to  fall 
into  this  error  in  a  community  in  which  customs  and 
national   characteristics   and   familiar  institutions  count 


6  INTllOBUCTION. 

for  little,  and  a  changeable  social  movement  for  much, 
in  the  determination  of  results. 

Social  forces  are  more  active,  and  society  is  more 
fluent  under  them,  here  than  elsewhere.  Changes  in 
families,  in  fortunes,  in  position,  and  in  place,  are  our 
constant  and  universal  experience.  Hardly  a  town  or 
village  shows  active  influences  to-day  which  are  in  the 
direct  line  of  those  of  fifty  years  ago.  The  records  of 
the  earlier  times  are  to  be  traced  quite  as  much  by  the 
names  on  the  tombstones  as  by  those  borne  by  the 
living.  Influential  families  have  declined  or  been  dis- 
persed, and  new  families  with  new  interests  have  taken 
their  place. 

Fortunes  are  made  and  lost  almost  momentarily  with 
us.  We  look  with  alarm,  not  on  this  fact,  but  on 
instances  in  which  large  wealth  is  retained  through 
successive  generations. 

The  following  statement  in  the  record  of  a  city  not 
more  changeable  than  many  others,  indicates  the  ease 
and  rapidity  of  our  social  transitions. 


Year. 

r    of    leading 
cturers       in 
ter,  Mass. 

who   began 
eymen. 

9  u 

v   3 
?   u 

2    3 

V 

0 

C   ■£ 

—     V 

■5  ®  .s 

0  =  .i  1 

fl)  .»    00 

s>  C 

»  "" 

V 

«  — 

<u    fe          P 

a  "2  v 

— '    3 

—     0 

^ 

,0  S  t-  ft 

!  a 

3    3.    X' 

A  01  <o 

1 

1840 

30 

28 

2 

14 

14 

3 

1850 

75 

68 

6 

41 

30 

6 

1860 

107 

101 

6 

43 

60 

8* 

*  Quarterly  Journal  of  Economics,  vol.  ii.  p.  448, 


ENGLISH  AND   AMERICAN  SOCIETY,  1 

The  variable  success  with  which  wealth  is  secured, 
the  readiness  with  which  it  is  lost,  and  the  fluctuation 
of  family  fortunes,  are  here  shown. 

In  no  country  is  there  a  more  ready  and  constant 
change  of  locality  by  its  citizens  than  in  the  United 
States.  These  transfers  loosen  instinctive  and  custom- 
ary tendencies,  and  leave  more  accidental,  more  volun- 
tary, more  thoughtful  ones  to  take  their  place. 

Needful  as  it  is,  in  each  instance,  to  understand  the 
traditional  influences  at  work  in  a  community,  a  com- 
munity in  which  these  prevail,  becomes,  thereby,  more 
exceptional  in  its  history,  and  of  less  general  interest. 
The  preponderance,  on  the  other  hand,  of  those  active 
social  forces  which  are  incident  to  growth  makes  a  com- 
munity increasingly  instructive  and  typical  in  its  social 
history.  Fundamental  tendencies  are  developed  in  it 
with  less  obstruction;  they  proceed  more  perfectly 
under  their  own  laws ;  and  we  are  able  to  pronounce  on 
them  with  more  insight  and  certainty.  The  simple 
rapidity  of  changes  makes  the  connections  of  causes  and 
effects  much  clearer. 


8  INTRODUCTION. 


CHAPTER  II. 

DEFINITIONS,  DIVISIONS,  PRELIMINARY  FACTS  AND 

PRINCIPLES. 

§  1.  (Sociology  is  a  knowledge  of  the  facts  of  so- 
ciety, the  order  in  which  they  follow  one  another,  and 
their  causes  and  reasons.1  This  knowledge  may  be  more 
or  less  full,  and  we  may  regard  it,  therefore,  as  more  or 
less  nearly  approaching  a  science.  The  three  items  of 
our  definition  imply,  in  the  order  in  which  they  are 
given,  a  continuous  growth  toward  complete,  that  is 
scientific,  knowledge.  We  cannot  well  fail  to  be  some- 
what familiar  with  a  portion  of  the  facts  of  society. 
An  extension  of  this  knowledge  is  the  first  fruit  of  in- 
quiry. The  second  fruit  is  an  observation  of  the  order 
in  which  these  facts  follow  one  another ;  and  this,  in  turn, 
leads  to  the  causes  and  reasons  which  occasion  it. 

Society  is  the  intercourse  of  men  in  communities.  It 
includes  all  the  ways  in  which  they  act  on  one  another, 
affecting  their  conscious  life.  A  community,  using  the 
word  broadly,  has  no  definite  limits.  It  may  embrace 
few  or  many;  it  may  have  its  centre  in  a  single  house- 
hold, or  it  may  coincide  with  the  household  of  nations. 
It  designates  more  frequently  narrower  relations  between 
those  close  at  hand.  Intercourse  will  be  varied  and  con- 
trolling in  inverse  ratio  to  the  extension  in  number  and 

i"  Province  of  Sociology,"  Prof.  F.  H.  Giddings.  "Annals  of 
the  American  Academy,"  vol.  i.  no.  1. 


DEFINITIONS.  9 

in  place  of  those  who  share  it.  Society  may  be  affected 
not  only  by  influences  in  their  origin  remote  in  place, 
but  also  by  influences  remote  in  time.  Society  is  espe- 
cially cumulative  in  its  constructive  forces.  It  is,  there- 
fore, the  most  comprehensive  of  those  combinations  we 
term  organic.  It  is  also  one  of  the  weakest  in  the 
dependencies  which  it  embraces.  Its  forces  come  from 
far,  and  are  frequently  very  feeble..  Near  and  remote, 
controlling  and  secondary,  influences  are  united  in  a 
very  obscure  and  complex  problem. 

Society  is  unfolded  along  the  lines  of  interaction 
between  things  and  persons,  causes  and  reasons.  Its 
events,  therefore,  may  be  determined  in  their  character 
and  sequence  both  by  causes  and  by  reasons,  in  complex 
interaction  one  with  another.  Causes  are  the  grounds  of 
connection  in  physical  facts,  —  are  forces.  Reasons  are 
the  grounds  of  connection  between  mental  phenomena, 
—  are  influences.  In  a  sequence  of  thought  Ave  term 
these  influences  reasons  ;  in  a  sequence  of  feelings,  oc- 
casions ;  in  a  sequence  of  actions,  motives.  Causes  and 
reasons  blend  in  every  possible  way  in  social  phenom- 
ena, and  are  the  double  ground  of  their  connection. 
Physical  and  mental  states,  by  the  intervention  of  the 
organized  human  body,  act  directly  on  each  other.  The 
impulse  on  the  one  side  retains  its  physical  character, 
and  on  the  other  side  its  intellectual  character. 

§  2.  Sociology  is  so  exceedingly  comprehensive  that 
it  seems  to  take  to  itself  all  forms  of  knowledge,  as  the 
ancients  were  ready  to  include  in  Rhetoric  all  the  sub- 
jects which  minister  to  persuasion.  If  we  are  to  dis- 
cuss Sociology  successfully,  we  must  limit  our  inquiry 
to  those  forms  of  action  which  arc  directly  organic  in/ 


10  INTRODUCTION. 

society,  and  which  thus  serve  at  any  one  time  to  deter- 
mine its  character.  AVe  must  assume  the  material 
which  these  forces  employ,  as  we  assume  in  Physiology 
the  facts  of  Physics  and  Chemistry.  We  are  to  busy 
ourselves  directly  with  those  processes  which  express 
the  constructive  energies  of  society,  and  to  consider 
only  indirectly  those  conditions  which  give  terms  to 
these  processes.  We  have  thus  two  sets  of  facts  in 
Sociology :  first,  those  which  stand  for  immediate  or- 
ganic forces,  as,  for  example,  forms  of  government ; 
and,  second,  those  social  conditions  which  at  any  one  v 
moment  meet  and  modify  these  forces,  as,  for  example, 
the  wealth  of  a  nation. 

Of  these  two  we  may  term  the  first  organic  facts,  and 
the  second  facts  of  attainment.  We  find  them  insepa- 
rably united,  and  in  constant  interaction.  The  facts  of 
attainment  are  the  more  permanent  deposits  incident 
to  organic  action,  and,  in  turn,  give  it  immediate  start- 
ing-points. The  possessions  and  institutions  already 
achieved  in  a  community  determine  the  forms  of  growth 
that  are  to  follow. 

Organic  facts  are  the  primary  facts  of  Sociology. 
We  consider  facts  of  attainment  only  as  they  are  the 
product  on  the  one  hand,  or  the  condition  on  the  other, 
of  the  organizing  energies  of  society. 

There  are  five  forms  of  organic  force  in  society : 
Customs,  Economics,  Civics,  Ethics,  Eeligion.  Pace 
relations,  local  relations,  and  facts  of  attainment,  make 
themselves  felt  through  these  organic  forms,  and  are 
of  interest  in  connection  with  them.  The  practical 
problems  Ave  have  to  consider  in  Sociology  are  made 
up,  on  the  one  side,  of  these  very  considerations,  racer 


DIVISIONS.  11 

characteristics,  local  circumstances,  and  given  phases 
of  development ;  and,  on  the  other  side,  of  the  general 
influences  and  principles  which  govern  social  phenom- 
ena. The  maintenance  of  health  presents  a  somewhat 
similar  form  of  action ;  the  facts  of  Physiology  and  the 
laws  of  hygiene,  in  connection  with  the  habits,  physical 
tendencies,  and  present  condition  of  the  person  in  hand, 
define  the  method  of  wholesome  action. 

Each  of  these  five  directions  of  social  activity  may 
be  studied  separately,  and  so  give  a  distinct  subordinate 
department  of  knowledge.  Thus  we  have  already,  as 
incomplete  sciences,  Economics,  Civics,  and  Ethics ;  and 
to  these  we  add  extended  discussions  of  Customs  and 
Religion.  The  five  may  also  be  treated  together,  as  they 
modify  one  another  and  collectively  build  up  society. 
This  method  of  consideration  gives  us  Sociology.  In 
like  manner  we  consider  the  various  parts  of  the  body, 
as  in  osteology,  neurology,  histology  ;  and  we  also  dis- 
cuss them  collectively  as  making  up  one  living  body, 
and  secure  as  the  result  of  our  inquiry  Physiology. 
Sociology  belongs  with  those  composite  sciences,  like 
Geology,  Biology,  which  presuppose  many  simple,  more 
separate,  departments  of  knowledge,  and  busy  them- 
selves with  these  primitive  forces  only  as,  acting  with 
one  another,  they  build  up  a  single  comprehensive 'pro- 
duct. The  final  product  is  the  ruling  idea,  and  the 
constituents  ,are  considered  only  in  connection  with  it. 

§  3.  The  five  organic  forms  of  social  action  fall  into 
three  groups ;  viz.,  first,  Customs  ;  second,  Economics 
and  Civics ;  third,  Ethics  and  Religion. 

The  first  group  is  that  of  primitive,  instinctive  or- 
ganic forces  ;    forces  which  initiate  social  activity,  pre- 


12  INTRODUCTION. 

cede  deliberate,  voluntary  action,  and  always  underlie  it 
as  the  more  intangible  and  unchangeable  terms  of  social 
life.  The  second  group  includes  forms  of  action  which 
are  in  a  large  measure  voluntary,  and  are,  therefore, 
subject  to  deliberation.  The  intelligent  life  of  man 
enters  into  them.  They  are  built  up  on  the  obscurely 
organic  forces  which  precede  them.  They  occupy  the 
consciousness  and  fill  the  thoughts  of  men.  Yet,  as 
compared  with  the  third  group,  they  arise  under  more 
exterior  and  irresistible  impulses.  They  have  a  dis- 
tinctly physical  bearing.  Food,  shelter,  safety,  are  im- 
mediately involved  in  them. 

The  third  group  pertains  to  action  in  its  least  sen- 
suous and  most  spiritual  incentives.  The  law  and  the 
impulse  are  of  an  interior,  personal  character.  They 
are  deeply  penetrated  and  thoroughly  pervaded  by  self- 
conscious  and  self-directed  impulses.  The  two,  Ethics 
and  Religion,  are  inseparable  from  each  other,  and  act 
from  above  in  a  subtile  and  powerful  way  on  the  forces 
which  lie  beneath  them.  Though  Ethics  and  Religion 
are  always  yielding  to  customary  convictions,  they  are 
also  always  struggling  to  break  with  them,  and  recon- 
struct them.  They  are  intensely  individual  in  their 
independent  appeal  to  each  mind.  They  are  open, 
therefore,  at  any  moment  to  a  new  disclosure  of  power 
in  some  one  person. 

The  three  groups  stand  in  a  definite  line  of  devel- 
opment. Customs  organize  society  and  set  it  in  mo- 
tion. This  simple  primitive  movement  is  taken  up  and 
extended  by  economic  and  civic  impulses.  Into  the  ex- 
tended relations  between  men  thus  instituted,  the  moral 
law  of  conduct  and  the  spiritual  sentiments  of  character 


DEFINITIONS.  13 

are  slowly  infused.  Tins  movement  is  co-etaneous  and 
successive,  the  pressure  of  motive  constantly  passing 
upward.  Custom  predominating,  we  have  a  barbarous 
or  a  semi-civilized  form  of  society.  Personal  interests 
and  civic  dependencies'  in  the  ascendency,  we  have  the 
more  advanced  forms  of  civilization.  The  spiritual  im- 
pulses uppermost,  we  pass  into  that  enlightenment,  that 
wide,  adequate  vision,  which  still,  for  the  most  part,  lies 
before  us. 

§  4.  Customs  are  the  unwritten  methods  of  action 
in  a  community.  They  are  opposed  to  all  distinctly 
accepted  and  prescribed  forms  of  conduct.  The  rule  is 
present,  but  unannounced. 

Economics  treats  of  values  and  their  relations  in 
production,  distribution,  and  exchange. 

Civics  discusses  the  laws,  customary  and  written, 
which  unite  men  in  the  state. 

Ethics  considers  those  principles  and  rules  of  conduct 
which  arise  from  the  constitution  of  man  and  society, 
and  which  are  discerned  and  enforced  within  the  con- 
scious life  of  each  person.  These  laws,  so  far  as  they 
are  enjoined  by  the  community,  become  either  customs 
or  statutes. 

Religion  embraces  the  beliefs,  feelings,  and  actions 
which  are  called  out  by  a  spiritual  world,  or  by  what  we 
may  term  the  spiritual  side  of  the  world.1  So  far  as 
sensuous  relations  measure  and  contain  our  lives,  we  are 
without  religion.  So  far  as  tangible  transient  terms  of 
being  are  connected  with  and  made  dependent  on  per- 
manent spiritual  truths  and  invisible  spiritual  entities, 
we  are  in  possession  of  the  germs  of  faith. 

i  "Natural  Religion,"  Max  Muller,  pp.  8-27. 


14  IN  Til  OB  UCTION. 

§  5.  Facts  of  attainment  do  not  admit  of  very  definite 
statement.  They  are  chiefly  made  up  of  wealth,  means 
of  production,  institutions,  language,  knowledge,  litera- 
ture, art,  refinements,  spiritual  beliefs.  Some  of  these, 
as  wealth  and  the  existing  means  of  production,  are 
more  palpable ;  others,  like  refinements  and  spiritual 
beliefs,  seem  vanishing  terms,  and  are  yet  among  the 
more  effective  influences  at  work  on  social  life. 

Facts  of  attainment  are  the  products  of  past  growth, 
the  deposit  of  previous  organic  power,  but  are  ready, 
in  turn,  to  react  strongly  on  these  constructive  forces. 
The  direction  and  the  vigor  of  further  change  will  be 
largely  determined  by  them.  If  these  facts  are  favor- 
able, they  are  of  the  nature  of  momentum ;  if  they  are 
unfavorable,  they  are  of  the  nature  of  inertia.  Thus 
the  means  of  production  —  a  well-tilled  soil,  improved 
methods  of  cultivation,  the  machinery  of  varied  manu- 
facture, ready  transportation  of  products,  easy  transfer 
of  ownership  —  greatly  quicken  effort.  The  want  of 
these  means  depresses  enterprise,  and  makes  it  un- 
gainful. 

The  facts  of  attainment,  influential  as  they  are,  act  on 
society  under  and  with  organic  forces.  Thus,  wealth  > 
affects  society  by  altering  the  relation  of  classes  to  one 
another,  and  by  modifying  the  organic  dependencies  of 
society  within  itself.  Society,  as  a  living  experience,  is 
different  because  of  the  forms  of  wealth  and  the  meth- 
ods in  which  it  is  acquired  and  held.  So  also  knowl- 
edge alters  civic  institutions,  makes  diverse  degrees  of 
liberty  possible,  and  imparts  new  color  and  cogency  to 
those  moral  relations  which  hold  men  together.  It  is 
right,  therefore,  that  these  facts  should  be  left,  in  the 


FACTS  OF  ATTAINMENT.  15 

discussions  of  Sociology,  in  the  outer  circle  of  condi- 
tions instead  of  being  placed  in  the  inner  circle  of  effi- 
cient forces.  They  must  enter  freely  into  our  estimates 
when  we  undertake,  by  means  of  our  social  principles, 
to  reach  any  actual  results,  or  reasonable  anticipations, 
in  the  progress  of  men.  Each  problem,  in  its  ruling 
terms,  will  be  largely  made  up  of  these  very  facts.  The 
possible  changes  of  to-day  belong  to  the  exact  phases 
of  achievement  which  characterize  the  communities  in 
which  they  are  arising.  Thus  with  us  in  the  United 
States,  the  feasible  and  fitting  steps  of  reform  are 
closely  connected  with  the  ways  in  which  we  are  pur- 
suing and  holding  wealth. 

Some  have  regarded  a  portion  of  these  facts,  for  ex- 
ample, language  and  literature,  as  properly  included,  on 
account  of  their  importance,  in  primary,  organic  forces. 
Yet  the  relative  weight  of  facts  of  attainment  does  not 
alter  the  class  to  which  they  belong.  Language  remains 
a  product  of  the  organizing  powers  which  unite  men  in 
society,  though  it  is  the  most  expressive  and  controlling 
among  these  results.  It  does  not  act  directly  on  society, 
but  indirectly,  giving  facility  and  ready  extension  to  its 
intellectual  processes.  It  is  the  vehicle  of  organic  force, 
not  the  very  force.  The  language  and  the  commerce  of 
England  are  closely  associated  ;  but  it  is  the  commerce 
which  extends  the  language,  rather  than  the  language 
which  enlarges  the  commerce.  The  strong  reactions  of 
language  and  literature  on  the  activities  from  which 
they  spring,  is  a  relation  common,  in  a  greater  or  less 
degree,  to  all  facts  of  attainment. 

Eacts  of  attainment  are  the  resources  at  any  one 
moment  at  the  disposal  of  organic  life  ;  they  are  not  the 


16  INTRODUCTION. 

impulses  of  that  life.  Life  will  be  strengthened  or 
"weakened  by  their  presence  or  absence,  but  will  not  be 
altered  in  its  essential  forces. 

Facts  of  attainment  admit,  in  each  direction,  of  sepa- 
rate presentation  ;  and  so  we  have  a  history  of  produc- 
tion, a  history  of  civilization,  a  history  of  institutions,  a 
history  of  literature,  a  history  of  art. 

§  6.  The  influences  which  are  operative  on  organic 
forces  are  of  two  kinds  ;  those  which  are  internal,  and 
those  which  are  external.  The  internal  influences  are, 
first,  the  native  endowments  of  individuals  and  of  races ; 
and,  second,  their  acquired  characteristics.  The  distinc- 
tion between  native  endowment  and  acquired  character- 
istic is  not  one  of  kind,  but  one  of  time.  It  is  not  unlike 
that  between  the  waters  of  a  river  and  the  distinguish- 
able waters  of  its  latest  affluent.  In  a  brief  period,  each 
successive  addition  takes  its  place  with  previous  ones, 
and  forms  with  them  an  inseparable  whole.  While, 
therefore,  national  character  is  an  exceedingly  weighty 
and  stable  term  in  all  social  problems,  it  is  not  an  im- 
mutable one.  New  elements  may  be  introduced  among 
national  tendencies,  as  streams  of  diverse  quality  flow 
into  a  river.  The  value  of  this  term  of  national  endow- 
ment ma}'  be  seen  in  the  history  of  such  a  race  as  the 
Irish.  The  changes  to  which  national  character  is  sus- 
ceptible are  disclosed  in  the  characteristics  of  Americans 
as  contrasted  with  those  of  Englishmen.  The  intensity 
which  race-endoAvments  may  assume  is  well  illustrated  in 
the  history  of  the  clans  of  the  Scottish  Highlands.  The 
very  pathetic  story  of  "  The  Highland  Widow,"  by  Sir 
Walter  Scott,  presents  the  invincible  tenacity  of  tribal 
beliefs  and  customs.     The  length  of  time  through  which 


INFLUENCES   ON  ORGANIC  FORCES.  17 

these  characteristics  may  accumulate  is  shown  in  the 
history  of  the  Jews.  The  sharp  practice  of  Jacob 
has  not  been  purged  out  of  the  moral  fibre  of  his  pos- 
terity by  the  vicissitudes  and  violence  of  many  centu- 
ries. 

External  influences  are  also  two ;  and  these,  like  the 
previous  pair,  are  closely  interlocked.  They  are,  first, 
physical  conditions,  and,  second,  acquired  resources.  Nat- 
ural conditions  are  made  up  of  such  terms  as  the  quali- 
ties of  the  soil,  character  of  the  climate,  lay  of  the  land, 
lay  of  the  water.  Collectively  they  constitute  the  en- 
vironment, that  which  encloses  and  acts  upon  a  given 
form  of.  life,  that  with  which  the  life  stands  in  constant 
terms  of  interaction.  Acquired  resources  are  what  we 
have  already  brought  forward  as  facts  of  attainment. 
These  facts  of  attainment  may,  some  of  them,  as  litera- 
ture and  art,  be  of  so  subtile  an  order  as  to  affiliate  with 
inner  tendencies  rather  than  with  outer  endowments ; 
yet  they  are  essentially  an  exterior  substantial  acquisi- 
tion. These  possessions  arise  in  extension  of  physical 
conditions,  and  in  intimate  interplay  with  them.  This 
is  obviously  true  of  the  forms  of  wealth  and  the  means 
of  production ;  but  these,  in  turn,  shape  institutions, 
enlarge  knowledge,  determine  refinement,  till  at  length 
the  full  environment  of  a  community  is  made  up  — ■ 
primitive  and  acquired,  present  and  historic,  physical 
and  spiritual.  It  then  becomes  impossible  to  cut  asun- 
der these  several  influences. 

Very  different  weight  is  attached  by  different  persons 
to  external  conditions  as  contrasted  with  primitive  ten- 
dencies. Some  look  upon  the  former  as  slowly  and  cer- 
tainly productive   of  the  latter,  while  others  insist  on 


18  Introduction. 

the  controlling  force  of  native  endowments.  Buckle's 
"  History  of  Civilization,"  Taine's  "  History  of  English 
Literature,"  Stephen's  "  Science  of  Ethics,"  enforce  the 
first  opinion  —  which,  after  all,  is  one  of  dissent.  The 
great  mass  of  conviction  lies  in  the  other  direction. 
The  doctrine  of  evolution  has  naturally  led  some  to 
assign  great  productive  power  to  environment.  At  short 
historic  range  —  and  it  is  at  this  range  that  we  must 
settle  sociological  problems  —  this  doctrine  meets  with 
great  difficulties.  One  would  think  that  Switzerland,  as 
contrasted  with  Holland,  should  have  been  the  home 
of  art.  Or,  if  one  wishes  to  refer  the  love  of  lib- 
erty in  Switzerland  to  its  mountains,  one  is  confronted 
with  a  like  passion  for  freedom  in  the  marshes  of  Hol- 
land. England,  Scotland,  and  Ireland  have  shared,  for 
a  long  time,  physical  conditions  in  many  particulars  the 
same,  yet  with  marked  diversities  of  character. 

If  we  take  into  consideration  long  periods,  doubt- 
less the  environment  and  the  life  it  encloses  tend  to 
parallelism  ;  but  when  men  are  involved  in  the  problem, 
the  parallelism  is  secured  cpaite  as  much  by  the  action 
of  the  occupants  of  the  soil  on  external  conditions  as  by 
the  action  of  these  conditions  on  the  occupants.  More- 
over, the  various  social  and  political  ends  which  men 
are  pursuing  frequently  break  up  the  continuity  of  en- 
vironment, and  subject  them,  as  they  advance  in  civiliza- 
tion, to  a  great  variety  of  new  conditions.  The  habitat 
of  civilized  man  is  variable  as  compared  with  that  of 
the  animal.  It  is  changeable  in  its  potent  terms  in 
the  same  place,  and  it  is  changeable  in  place.  The 
Englishman,  for  example,  is  becoming  indigenous  to 
every  part  of  the  globe.     It  is  much  better  freely  to  rec- 


INHERITANCE.  19 

ognize  both  tendencies  as  independent  terms,  than  it  is 
to  make  an  arbitrary  choice  between  them. 

§  7.  External  influences  pass  by  transfer ;  native  en- 
dowments by  inheritance.  The  law  of  inheritance  thus 
becomes  of  great  moment  in  Sociology.  Inheritance, 
taken  in  connection  with  Sociology,  has  three  forms, 
physical,  social,  and  moral.  Physical  inheritance  is  the 
passage  of  physical  powers  and  tendencies  from  parents 
to  children.  It  remains  an  open  question  whether  there 
is  any  direct  transfer  of  intellectual  and  spiritual  en- 
dowments ;  whether  the  mental  powers  and  proclivities 
of  the  offspring  are  simply  those  passed  to  it  by  the 
parents,  or  whether  they  are  relatively  independent  and 
primitive  endowments.  The  transfers  incident  to  physi- 
cal inheritance  seem  sufficient  to  explain  existing  agree- 
ments, while  the  marked  diversities,  both  in  kind  and 
degree,  in  intellectual  endowments  between  parents  and 
children,  seem  to  indicate  the  absence  of  any  close  de- 
pendence in  this  higher  relation.  It  is  not  easy  to 
understand  how,  under  a  severe  law  of  transfer,  either 
intellectual  or  spiritual  genius  should  appear,  as  it  has 
so  often  appeared,  in  the  line  of  mediocre  abilities. 

Physical  inheritance  must  profoundly  modify  intellec- 
tual powers  —  extremists  identify  the  two  —  first,  by  its 
transfer  of  sensuous  organs,  determined  to  definite  forms 
and  degrees  of  activity;  and,  second,  by  a  transfer  of 
nervous  conditions  fitted  in  widely  different  degrees  and 
ways  to  sustain  mental  activity.  A  certain  type  of  per- 
ceptive and  cerebral  endowment  goes  far  to  determine 
the  precise  phase  of  the  mental  and  spiritual  powers 
which  will  accompany  it.  The  examples  of  the  inheri- 
tance of  musical  powers,  given  somewhat  fully  by  Gal- 


20  INTRODUCTION. 

ton,  seem  to  enforce  the  law  of  physical,  rather  than  of 
intellectual,  descent.1  Musical  power  is  especially  de- 
pendent on  physical  perception,  and  on  a  nervous  and 
muscular  organization  in  delicate  response  to  this  per- 
ception. Without  these  physical  gifts,  excellence  in 
music  is  impossible ;  with  them,  excellence  is  inevitable. 

Physical  inheritance,  then,  in  man  assumes  even  more 
importance  than  in  the  animal,  as  the  developed  mechan- 
ism of  the  mind  goes  with  it.  Here  again,  without  be- 
ing bold  enough  to  affirm  that  this  method  of  transfer 
covers  the  entire  case,  we  may  well  believe  that  it 
includes  the  larger  share  of  it. 

Social  inheritance  is  a  transfer  of  social  influence  by 
social  nurture.  It  is  not  a  formal  delivery  of  specified 
things,  as  wealth  descends  from  father  to  son ;  nor  yet 
a  physical  inheritance,  as  the  bodily  weaknesses  of  the 
parent  reappear  in  his  offspring:  it  is  an  undesigned, 
impalpable,  but  very  efficacious,  transfer  of  those  impres- 
sions and  convictions  which  maintain  the  continuity  of 
our  households  and  of  our  communal  life.  It  is  not  easy 
to  estimate  at  their  true  value  that  accumulation  of 
social  sentiments  and  incentives  which  gathers  in  every 
family,  and  spreads  through  every  community,  till  it 
becomes  an  impulse  which  none  can  escape.  These  un- 
formulated feelings  supply  most  of  the  motives  which 
prompt  daily  action. 

Galton  draws  attention  to  the  fact  that  statesmanship 
has  so  often  passed  by  inheritance.  This  transfer  would 
seem  to  be  largely  of  this  social  order.  A  son  who  in- 
herits fair  intellectual  abilities  from  a  father,  occupying 
a  high  civil  position,  is  at  once  enclosed  by  opportunities 


1  " 


Hereditary  Genius,"  by  Francis  Galton. 


INHERITANCE.  21 

opening  a  comparatively  easy  road  to  distinction,  and 
he  is  acted  on  by  incentives  which  make  it  hard  not  to 
pursue  this  road.  The  social  influences  which  belong 
to  a  household  and  to  the  relations  of  that  household 
to  the  community,  must  always  go  far  in  determining 
the  pursuits  of  children.  Social  inheritance  is  a  potent 
factor  in  the  continuity  of  employments.  Acquired 
skill,  family  convenience,  mutual  aid,  and  concurrent 
feelings  all  lie  in  one  direction. 

A  third  form  of  inheritance  is  moral  transfer.  By  this 
is  meant  direct  inculcation  —  instruction  in  its  pri- 
vate and  public  forms.  The  free  schools  of  the  United 
States  are  a  most  direct  and  extended  means  of  carrying 
forward  the  national  life.  That  they  may  do  this  work 
more  perfectly,  they  call  distinctly  for  the  vital,  ruling 
impulse  which  is  expressed  in  ethical  law.  The  moral 
force  alone  gives  knowledge  momentum,  controlling  and 
constructing  power. 

These  three  forms  of  inheritance  are  so  blended  to- 
gether as  to  be  inseparable  in  their  effects.  Moral  forces 
slowly  shape  physical  forces,  and  physical  forces  give 
conditions  to  moral  forces.  When,  therefore,  our  atten- 
tion is  drawn  to  any  one  of  these  mediums  of  transfer, 
it  must  speedily  be  united,  in  its  comprehension,  to  the 
other  two.  The  underlying  physical  powers,  the  half- 
conscious  instinctive  social  impulses,  the  fully  formed 
moral  motives,  in  many  ways  pass  into  one  another  and 
together  secure  the  continuity  of  our  lives. 

§  8.  Inheritance,  allowing  the  word  to  include  the 
three  forms  now  indicated,  involves  two  tendencies  or 
series  of  facts.  The  first  and  fundamental  one  is  the  ten- 
dency to  uniformity,  to  transfer  qualities,  be  they  physi- 


22  INTRODUCTION. 

cal,  social,  or  moral,  from  parents  to  children  without 
change.  It  is  this  fact  which  inheritance  primarily 
expresses.  But  this  law  does  not  include  all  the  phe- 
nomena of  transfer.  There  is  another  tendency  in  con- 
travention of  this  tendency,  that  toward  variety.  New 
physical  features  appear  from  time  to  time  in  offspring. 
These,  in  turn,  come  under  the  primary  law  of  inher- 
itance, and  so  their  permanent  establishment  becomes 
possible. 

There  is  a  third  tendency  of  less  moment.  When 
the  conditions  which  have  given  occasion  to  varieties 
are  withdrawn,  there  is  a  disposition  in  the  form  of  life 
under  consideration  to  revert  to  its  earlier  type.  This 
is  termed  atavism.  It  belongs  to  social  and  spiritual,  as 
well  as  to  physical,  inheritance.  If  the  forces  securing 
a  vigorous,  complex,  social  life  become  weak,  social  in- 
stitutions revert  to  earlier,  simpler,  and  more  arbitrary 
forms.  Tramps  may  be  looked  on  either  as  escaping 
from  industrial  conditions  by  reversion,  or  as  standing 
for  a  small  remainder  which  has  never  come  fully  under 
these  conditions. 

In  social  growth,  variety  enters  in  various  ways.  It 
often  turns  on  individual  endowments.  A  great  man  is 
a  pivotal  man  on  whom  the  community  swings  forward. 
Such  a  person  offers  in  an  intense  form  the  very  incen- 
tives which  the  community  calls  for.  The  mass  of  men 
respond  most  directly  to  personal  influences.  Society 
is  thus  marshalled  under  a  leader,  and  renews  its  march. 
Such  a  man  was  Peter  the  Great  in  the  history  of 
Russia. 

Individuals  may  also  give  new  intensity  to  national 
sentiments,   in  conflict   with,   coherent   growth,   and  so 


VARIETY  IN  SOCIAL   GROWTH.  23 

divert  or  retard  the  joint  life.  Napoleon  Bonaparte  in- 
flamed in  France  the  martial  ardor  of  a  warlike  race, 
and  so  helped  to  divide  and  disperse  its  energies  for  a 
century.  The  ministration  of  individuals  to  nations,  and 
the  cordial  support  of  leaders  by  an  enthusiastic  people, 
give  us  the  most  interesting  chapters  in  human  history. 
Great  moral  and  spiritual  forces  have  entered  the  world 
almost  exclusively  through  extraordinarily  endowed  in- 
dividuals. 

New  phases  of  development  have  followed  conquest. 
The  conquest  of  the  East  by  Alexander,  giving  occasion 
to  such  cities  as  Antioch  and  Alexandria,  became  a 
ruling  factor  in  civilization.  The  slowly  subduing  force 
of  Grecian  culture  in  Roman  character,  incident  to  the 
conquest  of  Greece  by  Rome,  is  as  significant  a  fact  as 
history  anywhere  offers. 

A  third  occasion  for  variety  in  national  character  is 
found  in  emigration.  Each  Grecian  city  planted  in  a 
foreign  land  took  on  new  characteristics.  Each  English 
colony  is  subjected  to  fresh  experiences  which  quickly 
alter  national  tendencies.  The  American  type  and  the 
English  type  are  very  distinguishable. 

A  nation  is  also  altered  by  immigration.  Our  na- 
tional character  is  being  modified  by  the  great  variety 
of  immigrants  we  have  received.  The  ultimate  result 
becomes  a  cause  of  grave  apprehension. 

There  are  also  occasionally  sudden  social  changes 
which  deeply  modify  the  character  of  a  community. 
The  abolition  of  slavery  in  the  Southern  States  was 
such  a  change.  The  South  has  taken  on  new  forms  of 
industry,  altering  social  sentiments  and  social  relations. 
The  modern  industrial  world,  in  all  civilized  countries, 


24  INTRODUCTION. 

is  quite  different  from  the  world  which  preceded  it,  the 
change  being  due  to  new  forms  and  greatly  increased 
force  in  production. 

§  9.  National  type  and  external  circumstances  are  in 
such  close  and  rapid  interaction,  that  it  is  not  easy  to 
keep  them  apart  in  our  consideration  of  them.  We 
may,  however,  advance  some  general  propositions  con- 
cerning them. 

National  type  and  external  circumstances  are,  in  ref- 
erence to  each  other,  of  variable  value.  Either  may 
gain  sudden  force  in  reference  to  the  other,  and  pass 
through  a  period  of  unusual  dominance.  A  conquered 
tribe  may  sink  into  abject  submission.  Discouragement 
may  overtake  and  depress  a  nation,  as  it  does  individ- 
uals, and  leave  it  "  scattered  and  peeled."  Yet  heavier 
misfortunes  may  knit  other  races  more  firmly  together. 
Thus  Jewish  character,  in  spite  of  the  grinding  pro- 
cesses of  many  ages,  many  places,  and  many  nations, 
remains  as  distinct  and  invincible  as  ever.  A  people 
may  readily  yield  to  one  set  of  influences,  like  the  in- 
habitants of  Alsace  and  Lorraine,  and  firmly  resist  an- 
other. We  cannot  assign  either  exact  or  permanent 
values  to  these  two  factors.  They  are  subject,  between 
themselves,  to  a  changeable  interplay  of  power. 

Nations  in  earlier,  ruder,  and  feebler  periods  are 
more  submissive  to  external  circumstances  than  in  later 
and  stronger  ones.  If  a  race  comes  suddenly  under  an 
extended  change  of  conditions,  even  though  the  new 
conditions  are  favorable,  it  frequently  fails  to  respond 
to  them.  The  inner  life  is  disturbed  and  unbalanced 
by  its  new  terms,  not  quickened  and  nourished  by  them. 
Thus    the    inhabitants  of   the   Sandwich   Islands   show 


NATIONAL    TYPE  AND   CONDITIONS.  25 

signs  of  shrinking  up  and  withering  away  before  the 
strong  light  of  a  sudden  civilization.  The  Indian,  as 
contrasted  with  the  Negro,  in  our  own  country,  has 
shown  less  elasticity,  less  power  of  adaptation,  less  pa- 
tience in  accepting  new  impulses.  Some  races  seem  to 
show,  in  comparison  with  other  races,  exhausted  vitality, 
as  do  plants  in  the  vegetable  world.  The  Japanese  are 
manifesting  unusual  power,  and  are  passing  rapidly 
and  successfully  through  a  wide  circle  of  changes. 

On  the  other  hand,  civilization,  while  it  may  seem 
chiefly  to  accumulate  the  external  conditions  which 
shape  our  lives,  often  greatly  deepens  and  strengthens 
the  life  itself.  Thus  the  English  readily  accept  and 
uniformly  thrive  under  the  circumstances  offered  by 
any  quarter  of  the  globe.  They  show  remarkable 
power  of  colonization,  and  push  forward  or  push  out  of 
the  way  the  feebler  races  they  encounter.  The  Portu- 
guese, on  the  other  hand,  and  in  some  degree  the  Span- 
iards, suffer  deterioration  as  the  ultimate  result  of  their 
enterprise.  The  world  has  gained  comparatively  little 
by  their  conquests  and  colonies.  It  has  been  said, 
"  The  animal  is  the  creature  of  environment,  man  is 
the  creator  of  environment."  1  This  assertion  implies  a 
constant  growth  of  spiritual  power  in  its  mastery  over 
the  world. 

A  third  allied  proposition  is  that  misfortune  depresses 
moral  power,  and  prosperity  loosens  the  limitations  of 
circumstances  and  makes  change  increasingly  easy.  In- 
deed this  statement  approaches  a  truism,  since  we  often 
mean  by  misfortune  that  which  bears  back  personal 
power,  and  by  prosperity  that  which  calls  it  out.     We 

J  "The  Humanities,"  J.  W.  Powell,  The  Forum,  vol.  x.  p.  410. 


26  INTRODUCTION. 

do  not  always  distinguish  between  the  external  losses 
which  are  ready  to  occasion  a  depression  of  life,  and  that 
depression  itself ;  between  the  gains  which  strengthen 
a  growing  impulse,  and  the  very  impulse.  In  each  case 
the  misfortune  and  the  fortune  lie  chiefly  in  the  altered 
response  of  society  to  its  circumstances.  Thus  we  have 
the  proverb,  "  Nothing  succeeds  like  success."  The  mo- 
mentum of  a  people  counts  for  much,  as  does  also  its 
inertia.  We  express  them  as  courage  and  discourage- 
ment. They  have  an  expansive  and  restrictive  power 
beyond  merely  mechanical  measurements. 

The  struggle  between  type  and  environment  offers  in 
society  three  phases,  and  leads  to  a  fourth  principle. 
Each  of  these  phases  has  given  occasion  to  much  diver- 
sity of  opinion.  In  persons  we  express  the  two  tenden- 
cies as  freedom  and  fatalism,  the  power  of  the  individual 
over  his  terms  of  life,  the  degree  in  which  these  terms 
govern  the  life  they  embrace.  The  ever-returning  diver- 
sity of  statement  at  this  point  serves  chiefly  to  show  the 
great  value,  and  the  variable  value,  of  each  factor. 

In  education  this  conflict  reappears  as  ability  and 
acquisition,  native  tendency  and  training.  In  a  lower 
grade  of  life  we  express  the  difference  as  stock  and 
breeding.  There  are  those  who  attach  excessive  impor- 
tance to  each  of  these  two  agents,  as  contrasted  with  the 
other,  in  the  composite  result.  Thus  it  has  been  said, 
that  if  a  person  could  compose  the  ballads  of  a  nation, 
he  would  thereby  shape  its  character.  But  these  ballads 
are  themselves  the  product  of  the  national  character  and 
history.  A  nation  can  no  more  take  on  its  ballads  at 
pleasure,  than  it  can  assume  its  language  or  its  physical 
traits.  Its  ballads  are  the  composite  expression  of  its, 
inner  and  outer  life. 


RELATION  OF  THE   TWO.  27 

Neither  of  these  two  terms  in  education  can  be 
handled  successfully  without  the  other.  Now  one,  now 
the  other,  will  seem  to  predominate  amid  the  variable 
phases  through  which  men  are  passing.  The  transfer 
is  so  constant  and  vital  between  them  as  to  confuse  the 
lines  of  distinction. 

The  third  form  of  this  contrast  is  between  temper 
and  institutions  in  a  community,  between  mobility  and 
immobility  in  a  people.  We  assign  mobility  to  national 
power,  immobility  to  the  force  of  events.  The  Anglo- 
Saxons  are  thought  to  have  a  race-predilection  for  free 
institutions.  Their  freedom  is  referred  to  race-endow- 
ments quite  as  much  as  to  external  circumstances.  Tyr- 
anny, on  the  other  hand,  is  indigenous  in  the  Oriental 
world  ;  it  is  incorporate  in  the  character  of  the  people. 
Americans  are  mobile  in  the  last  degree.  The  Chinese 
are  immobile,  in  a  like  degree.  The  two  cannot  shape 
themselves  to  each  other. 

A  single  consideration  is  sufficient  to  show  that  these 
two  terms,  inner  and  outer  force,  must  each  enter  freely 
into  all  our  social  studies.  The  one  influence,  circum- 
stances, owes  its  significance  to  the  fact  that  it  acts  on 
and  modifies  the  other  influence,  character.  Till  this 
modification  takes  place,  variety  in  circumstances  is  of 
no  moment.  Personal  force,  on  the  other  hand,  shows 
itself  at  once  in  acting  on  and  reshaping  circumstances. 
It  is  at  this  point,  the  changes  it  accomplishes,  that  we 
take  its  measurement.  The  two  elements  are  so  com- 
pletely reciprocal  that  the  one  loses  significancy  without 
the  other.  It  must  find  its  expression  and  measure 
in  the  other. 

Our  most  comprehensive  principle,  then,  is,  that  we 


28  IN  TR  OD  UCTION. 

find  in  the  interaction  of  these  two  elements,  namely, 
inner  and  outer  force,  another  form  of  that  movable 
equilibrium  which  is  the  condition  of  social  growth,  as 
it  is,  in  one  form  or  another,  of  all  growth. 

§  10.  The  notion  of  a  movable  equilibrium  is  widely 
applicable  to  mechanical,  vital,  and  social  phenomena. 
One  turns  sharply  in  skating.  The  skater  overcomes 
the  force  that  would  throw  him  outward  by  inclining 
inward.  By  virtue  of  motion  he  maintains  his  balance 
between  conflicting  tendencies.  If  he  were  suddenly 
checked,  the  outward  fling  would  vanish,  and  the  inward 
weight  would  issue  in  a  fall.  The  rider  on  a  bicycle 
runs  the  gauntlet  of  innumerable  tumbles  on  the  right 
and  on  the  left,  by  virtue  of  a  motion  which  holds  in 
equilibrium  the  conflicting  forces.  He  cannot,  for  a 
moment,  maintain  the  safety  at  rest  which  he  easily 
commands  by  movement.  The  solar  system  is  at  once 
the  most  prominent  and  the  most  changeable  example 
of  a  movable  equilibrium. 

We  readily  conceive  life  in  the  plant  and  the  animal 
under  this  same  relation.  Hereditary  force  carries  the 
life  in  one  direction,  the  changing  conditions  of  the 
environment  tend  to  deflect  it  in  other  directions.  The 
actual  variations  which  arise  are  fresh  adjustments 
under  these  diverse  tendencies,  combining  them  in  a 
result  compatible  with  both. 

The  progress  of  society  is  also  a  movable  equilib- 
rium, maintained  under  a  variety  of  opposed  forces. 
The  radical,  the  progressive,  the  centrifugal  forces  are 
personal  powers  —  impulses  acting  in  society  through 
its  more  advanced  members  —  and  changing  circum- 
stances which  make  unexpected  demands  and    impart 


Movable  equilibrium.  29 

unusual  incentives.  The  conservative,  repressive,  cen- 
tripetal forces  are  national  type,  inheritance,  tradition, 
custom  —  the  perpetuity  of  the  conditions  and  the  firm- 
ness of  the  limits  within  which  the  national  activity  is 
moving. 

We  have  in  China  a  striking  example  of  retarded 
motion  under  an  accumulation  of  one  set  of  forces. 
Customs  everywhere  pervade  and  possess  the  life.  Imi- 
tation is  a  conspicuous  characteristic.  Memory  is  a 
supreme  intellectual  endowment.  The  educated  classes 
lay  hold  of  the  literature  of  the  past  and  roll  it  over 
and  over  in  each  successive  generation  as  the  sum  and 
substance  of  wisdom.  Religion  settles  down  into  a 
worship  of  ancestry.  The  very  language  loses  interior 
development,  grows  by  painful  accretion,  and  lays  an 
immense  burden  on  the  retentive  powers.  As  the 
maturer  trunk  of  an  endogenous  tree  becomes  too  com- 
pact for  fresh  deposits,  so  may  national  life  become  too 
elaborate  and  firm  for  new  development.  The  vital 
processes  are  slowing  up  toward  suspension  or  toward 
revolution. 

In  contemplating  society,  we  readily  start  with  the 
impression  that  it  is  open  to  every  form  of  change,  to 
easy  improvement.  "With  a  larger  experience  of  the 
many  points  of  resistance  and  the  unexpected  forms  of 
reaction  which  may  set  in,  we  may  readily  pass  over  to 
the  opposite  conclusion  that  society  cannot  be  diverted 
from  its  predetermined  orbit,  and  that  it  is  better  that 
we  should  adjust  ourselves  to  it,  rather  than  enter  on 
the  perplexing  and  futile  effort  of  adjusting  it  to  our 
ideals.  The  first  conviction  gives  rise  to  fanaticism, 
the  second  to  cynicism,  and  both  are  equally  wide  of 


30  INTRODUCTION. 

the  truth.  Both  forget  that  society  is  a  movable  equi- 
librium which  may  be  controlled,  but  must  be  controlled 
by  skilful  handling  under  its  own  conditions.  Conflict- 
ing tendencies  must  be  united  in  a  forward  movement 
which  may  be  accelerated  rather  than  retarded  by  the 
intensity  of  the  strife.  In  a  combination  of  forces,  the 
power  which  drives  the  body  along  the  diagonal  may  be 
made  up  of  forces  which,  left  to  themselves,  would  have 
impelled  it  a  less  distance  on  either  side. 

Thus  we  may  say  of  religious  life,  a  leading  phase  of 
social  life,  that  it  presents  a  line  of  conduct  the  resul- 
tant, on  the  one  hand,  of  sensuous  impressions,  and  on 
the  other,  of  spiritual  insights.  If  the  two  are  com- 
bined in  the  same  ictus,  a  sober  and  rapid  unfolding  of 
the  entire  spiritual  nature  follows. 

There  is  then  no  limit  to  the  control  which  can  be 
exercised  over  society  in  its  progress,  if  our  directing 
and  correcting  powers  are  applied  through  long  periods 
under  and  with  the  forces  which  are  potent  at  the  very 
time  and  place  we  are  considering.  Each  effect,  each 
modified  movement,  begets  the  conditions  of  a  more 
facile  movement  at  the  next  stage,  till  in  the  end,  as 
in  all  skilful  performance,  nothing  seems  so  easy,  so 
perfectly  knit  together,  as  the  most  difficult  achieve- 
ment. Society  that  is  moving  forward  draws  its  strength 
from  all  sides. 


PART    I. 

CUSTOMS  AS  A  FACTOR  IN  SOCIOLOGY. 


PART    I. 
CUSTOMS   AS   A   FACTOR   IN   SOCIOLOGY. 


CHAPTER  I. 
DEFINITIONS   AND   DIVISIONS.  —  SOCIAL   CUSTOMS. 

§  1.  Customs  are  the  conventional  methods  by  which 
men  in  society  order  their  action  in  reference  to  one 
another.  They  arise  spontaneously  under  social  feel- 
ings. Men  are  gregarious  ;  and  the  herd  and  the  method 
of  the  herding  are,  in  a  large  degree,  inevitable.  Cus- 
toms are  the  product  of  these  primitive  organic  tenden- 
cies among  men.  In  reference  to  all  later  and  more 
voluntary  acts  of  association,  they  constitute  the  vital 
substance,  the  social  protoplasm,  which  is  presupposed 
as  the  supporting  and  plastic  material  subject  to  all 
later  organic  changes.  They  are  to  the  social  life  what 
physical  habits  are  to  the  body  of  man ;  the  basis  on 
which  voluntary  action  rests,  that  above  which  it  rises, 
that  into  which  it  sinks.  The  tendency  to  establish 
and  repeat  a  familiar  method  belongs  to  human  action. 
Customs,  in  their  origin,  are  deeply  though  obscurely 
planted  in  the  instinctive,  organic  proclivities  of  the 
race. 

The  authority  of  customs  is  found,   in  the  first  in- 

33   __, 


34  CUSTOMS. 

stance,  in  the  feelings  which  they  express  and  gratify. 
They  are  a  spontaneous  product  of  the  feelings.  They 
shortly,  however,  acquire  an  additional  authority  in  the 
good  order  they  establish,  the  interests  they  sustain,  the 
calculable  terms  of  action  which  they  offer.  They  thus 
gather  to  themselves  in  a  most  imposing  and  imperious 
form  all  the  motives  and  sentiments  which  unite  men  to 
one  another.  Any  extensive  dissolution  of  customs  is 
a  breaking  down  of  the  affinities  by  which  men  are 
bound  to  each  other  —  is  social  chaos. 

Customs  are  most  potent  with  the  ignorant.  They  in 
part  take  the  place  of  those  moral  motives  which  bind 
together  the  more  thoughtful.  Men  of  the  widest  intel- 
ligence hold  them  in  high  consideration,  but  they  do  so 
because  of  the  impossibility  of  supplying  their  place 
with  the  uncultivated.  They  act  in  the  absence  of 
higher  motives.  Boys  are  abjectly  subject  to  the  opin- 
ions and  ways  of  their  playmates.  They  secure  no  suf- 
ficient ground  in  reason  from  which  to  take  up  the  labor 
of  resistance. 

Young  men,  journeymen,  college  students,  show  this 
disposition  to  submit  to  prevalent,  irrational  customs. 
The  governing  sentiments  of  these  little  worlds  rest  on 
tradition.  Their  members  oppose  the  unreasoned  ways 
of  the  past  to  the  better  methods  that  are  coming  to 
prevail  in  the  wider  world  which  encloses  them.  Cus- 
toms are  thus  the  instinctive  methods  of  restraint  which 
overtake  those  otherwise  ungovernable  —  an  anticipation 
of  reason  and  an  organic  substitute  for  its  deficiencies. 

§  2.  Customs  thus  stand  in  a  complex  and  important 
relation  to  progress.  The  first  step  in  progress  is  the 
power  to  combine.     The  germ  tendency  is  this  organic 


PURPOSE  SUBSERVED   BY  CUSTOMS.  35 

tendency.  Without  it  later  movements  would  secure  no 
basis.  The  more  conscious  and  complete  process  must 
rest  on  the  less  conscious  and  complete  one.  Customs, 
in  their  ease  of  formation,  express  the  readiness  of 
growth ;  and  in  their  stability,  the  firmness  of  growth. 
The  nations  which  readily  take  on  customs,  and  hold 
them  with  as  much  tenacity  as  is  consistent  with  renew- 
ing them,  have  the  most  power.  The  Greeks,  in  conse- 
quence of  their  volatile  and  elastic  character,  had  less 
organizing  force  than  properly  belonged  to  their  great 
intellectual  endowments.  They  created  many  cities, 
but  no  large  communities.  The  Romans,  far  more  sub- 
missive to  customs,  and  to  laws  the  outgrowth  of  cus- 
toms, carried  with  them  everywhere  the  vigor  of  empire. 
The  English,  equally  productive  in  the  realm  of  law, 
have  shown  like  power  in  subjecting  and  guiding  races 
of  men.  Natural  selection  works  for  those  nations  pos- 
sessed of  that  organizing  tendency  whose  primitive 
expression  is  custom.1 

But  progress  involves  two  movements,  the  instinc- 
tive one  by  which  social  construction  is  secured,  and  the 
more  thoughtful  one  by  which  this  construction  is  con- 
stantly reshaped  for  more  comprehensive  and  adequate 
ends.  Customs  stand  for  the  first,  and  the  development 
of  ethical  motives  for  the  second.  It  is  as  essential, 
therefore,  to  growth  that  custom  should  steadily  give 
way  before  the  moral  reason,  as  it  is  that  it  should  be 
readily  formed  in  the  first  instance.  Social  develop- 
ment, like  the  growth  of  the  body,  involves  constructive 
and  destructive  processes  in  constant  interplay.  Too 
great  resistance  in  customs  is  as  fatal  to  the  unfolding 

1  "Physics  and  Politics,"  Walter  Bagehot. 


36  CUSTOMS. 

moral  life  as  too  great  facility  of  change.  A  successful 
equilibrium  allows  each  tendency  perfect  expression  and 
unites  them  at  their  maximum. 

The  immediate  force  of  customs  is  the  feelings  which 
are  nourished  by  them.  These  feelings,  which  may 
have  passed  quite  away  from  their  original  and  more 
rational  basis,  interpose  an  obstacle  to  progress  which 
often  defies  argument.  For  this  reason  ridicule,  calling 
out  an  adverse  set  of  feelings,  is  often  an  effective 
weapon  in  reform.  That  which  is  not  at  the  moment 
sustained  by  sound  thought,  cannot  be  overcome  by 
sound  thought.  Progress,  involving  a  complete  develop- 
ment of  our  rational  powers,  must  often,  for  the  moment, 
depend  on  the  pressure  of  circumstances  and  avail  itself 
to  the  utmost  of  current  sentiments  that  a  fresh  plastic 
state  of  the  public  mind  may  be  reached,  and  that  earlier 
organic  tendencies  may  not  be  allowed  to  anticipate  and 
exclude  later  ones.  Customs  must  show  a  dynamic  as 
well  as  a  static  force.  The  swing  of  the  pendulum 
downward  must  prepare  the  way  for  its  swing  upward. 
The  momentum  which  carries  the  national  life  into  a 
custom  must  also  carry  it  beyond  that  custom.  Social 
and  civil  institutions  must  not  take  to  themselves  infal- 
libility. The  one  key  of  all  complications  is  movement ; 
but  this  movement  must  be  one  of  distinct  departures 
and  moderate  and  definite  measurements. 

Society,  in  every  one  of  its  phases,  has  the  greatest 
difficulty  in  toning  down  to  a  healthy  growth  its  own 
organic  forces.  They  in  turn  sweep  over  and  suppress 
one  another.  Thus  there  is  no  direction  in  which  belief, 
because  of  the  indeterminate  and  exhaustless  nature  of 
the  truth  at  its  disposal,  should  have  freer  and  wider 


DIVISION   OF  CUSTOMS.  37 

sweep  than  in  our  spiritual  life.  Yet  religion,  quickly 
subjected  to  its  own  earlier  achievements,  submits  itself 
to  doctrines,  rites,  and  ordinances  which  first  express, 
then  restrain,  then  strangle  its  growth.  A  current  doc- 
trine of  the  fourth  and  fifth  centuries  was  that  "that 
should  be  held  for  Catholic  truth  which  has  been  be- 
lieved everywhere,  always,  and  by  all."  * 

The  equilibrium  of  faith  lies  in  reconciling  the  power 
to  retain  the  spiritual  acquisitions  we  have  made  with 
the  power  to  secure  further  insight ;  in  framing  an 
orbit  of  revolution  in  the  open  spaces  of  the  yet  unfin- 
ished system  to  which  we  belong. 

§  3.  Customs  are  of  three  leading  forms,  social,  civic, 
and  religious.  Social  customs  pertain  to  the  intercourse 
of  men  in  society;  civic  customs  are  associated  with 
action  as  ordered  by  the  state ;  religious  customs  attach 
to  conduct  as  it  comes  under  the  government  of  faith. 

Social  customs,  in  turn,  fall  into  three  classes;  viz., 
first,  those  which  pertain  to  the  family  ;  second,  those 
which  are  involved  in  the  relation  of  classes  to  each 
other ;  third,  those  which  concern  the  general  inter- 
course of  men.     The  last  named  we  term  manners. 

The  germ  cell  of  our  organic  life  is  the  family.  Here 
all  relations  commence,  and  to  it  they  are  constantly 
returning.  This  is  the  seed  from  which  each  crop  is 
grown,  and  this  the  seed  to  which  all  crops  return. 
From  the  family  spring  classes,  tribes,  nations;  while 
national  life  gives  the  occasion  for  economic,  civic,  re- 
ligious activity.  No  matter  how  far  this  development 
proceeds,  it  returns  at  every  step  to  expand  and  perfect 
the  household. 


1  " 


Continuity  of  Christian  Thought,"  Al.  V.  G.  Allen,  p.  161. 


38  CUSTOMS. 

All  social  growth,  therefore,  finds  expression  in  the 
family,  in  its  purity,  in  its  strength,  in  its  liberty.  The 
nation  whose  life  is  most  deeply  rooted  in  its  house- 
holds will  be  the  nation  of  the  most  comprehensive, 
peaceful,  and  permanent  prosperity.  The  purity  of  the 
household  prepares  the  way  for  its  strength,  and  its 
strength  enables  it  to  grant  the  largest  liberty.  As  its 
strength  becomes  interior  and  spiritual,  it  puts  the  least 
coercion  on  action,  and  concedes  it  the  freest,  most 
beneficent  law.  The  beauty  of  the  family  lies  in  its 
cohesive  force  as  associated  with  individual  freedom. 
It  therein  becomes  the  model  of  all  fortunate  social 
construction,  as  well  as  the  interpreting  idea,  in  many 
ways,  of  our  highest  spiritual  relations. 

The  family  involves  three  primary  relations,  that  of 
parents  to  each  other,  that  of  children  to  parents,  that 
of  children  to  each  other.  These  leading  connections  fall, 
in  a  large  household,  into  many  subordinate  ones.  When 
we  add  to  the  distinctions  between  sons  and  daughters, 
and  between  older  and  younger  children,  those  which 
arise  from  diversity  of  character,  we  have  a  large  group 
of  dependencies  in  which  like  and  diverse  ties  are  most 
happily  blended ;  all  the  members  of  the  household 
hanging,  like  the  grapes  of  a  single  cluster,  by  one  stem. 

If  the  first  of  these  three  relations  fails,  all  are  likely 
to  fail  with  it.  The  attachments  of  the  household  are 
usually  measured,  in  their  tenacity,  by  the  love  of  par- 
ents, primarily  expressed  toward  each  other.  If  love 
does  not  fill  this  its  first  channel  to  overflowing,  it  is 
likely  to  find  its  way  but  slowly  into  secondary  ones. 
We  must,  ordinarily,  rely  on  the  love  called  out  in  par- 
ents toward  each  other  as  the  uniform  and  sufficient 


PURITY.  39 

occasion  of  affection  for  their  children ;  and  on  the  love 
of  children  for  their  parents  as  the  chief  source  of 
mutual  regard. 

Hence  purity,  the  indispensable  condition  of  love  in 
the  first  relation,  becomes  the  root-virtue  of  the  house- 
hold, the  germ  of  all  social  obligations.  Purity  is  the 
distinctive  quality  of  the  first  human  tie,  that  which  lies 
between  parents;  strength  is  the  distinctive  quality  of 
the  second  relation,  that  between  parents  and  children; 
and  liberty  of  the  third  relation,  that  between  children. 
The  cohesion  of  the  household  lies  in  the  authority  of 
the  parents  as  justified  and  supported  by  affection.  The 
early  Roman  family  was  one  of  great  vigor.  Absolute 
authority  belonged  to  the  father,  an  authority  which 
followed  the  son  as  long  as  the  father  lived,  and  the 
daughter  till  she  was  transferred  to  another  household. 
The  mother  was  held  in  high  honor,  but  her  authority 
was  merged  in  that  of  the  father.  The  subjection  of 
children  was  as  complete  as  that  of  slaves.1  This  sever- 
ity of  relations  was  softened  by  the  affections  incident 
to  them.  The  strength  of  the  Roman  household  was 
lost  in  its  later  history  with  the  loss  of  purity,  the  loss 
of  permanency  in  the  marriage  relation.  A  tie  in  the 
beginning  too  absolute  became  fatally  relaxed. 

Liberty  in  the  household  expresses  itself  in  the  per- 
fect equality  of  children,  and  in  the  submission  of  the 
authority  of  parents  to  the  terms  assigned  by  the  ends  of 
nurture  as  softened  and  expanded  by  affection.  The 
liberty  of  the  household  is  that  lawful  liberty  which 
freely  adopts  and  spontaneously  completes  the  obliga- 
tions which  are  attaching  to  the  conjoint  life;  it  is  the 

1  Mommseu's  "  History  of  Rome,"  vol.  i.  chap.  v. 


40  CUSTOMS. 

product  of  active  and  well-directed  affections,  the  liberty 
which  belongs  to  all  in  the  fulfilment  of  a  common  life. 

§  4.  Marriage  rests  on  a  physical,  customary,  eco- 
nomic, civic,  ethical,  and  spiritual  basis.  Its  growth  in 
completeness  and  power  lies  between  these  two  extremes, 
a  physical  impulse  and  a  spiritual  fellowship.  It  cov- 
ers the  entire  intervening  ground,  and  draws  strength 
from  every  part  of  it. 

As  early  as  the  earlier  portion  of  the  third  century, 
Modestinus,  a  great  Roman  civilian,  affirmed  :  "  Marriage 
is  a  union  of  a  man  and  woman  by  which  the  whole  of 
life  is  partaken  of  in  common,  and  all  rights,  human 
and  divine,  are  freely  interchanged  between  them."  * 

The  sexual  relation  is  the  most  universal,  potent,  and 
transcendental  relation  that  lies  between  living  things. 
It  is  well-nigh  commensurate  with  life.  It  is  associated 
with  offspring,  is  the  creative  point  at  which  new  pow- 
ers, new  varieties,  new  species,  find  entrance.  It  is 
transcendental  in  the  sense  that  the  results  so  far  tran- 
scend any  terms  of  mechanical  or  physical  explanation 
we  can  put  upon  them,  as  to  remain  ultimate  facts  which 
we  are  compelled  to  accept  with  no  knowledge  of  their 
causal  grounds. 

The  starting-point  in  marriage  is  animal  impulse,  pass- 
ing sluggishly  on  through  polyandry  and  polygamy  into 
monogamy.  Promiscuity  is  not  the  general  condition  of 
animal  life,  or  even  of  plant  life  in  its  higher  forms.  In 
both  of  these  we  find  the  appearance  of  more  or  less  posi- 
tive limitations.  Monogamy  is  a  primary  necessity  of 
our  spiritual,  rather  than  of  our  physical,  life.  We  should 
have   difficulty  in  making   it  imperative  on  the    lower 

1  "  Roman  Civil  Law,"  Sheldon  Amos,  p.  278. 


MARRIAGE.  41 

ground  simply.  It  is  what  Goethe  terras  a  "  culture  con- 
quest." Nowhere  is  the  supremacy  of  the  claims  of  our 
higher  nature  more  distinctly  made  out,  or  more  author- 
itatively enforced  on  their  own  basis,  than  in  marriage. 
There  is  no  deterioration  less  doubtful,  more  dreadful, 
more  self-avenging,  than  impurity,  judged  from  a  social 
and  spiritual  point.  The  word  impurity  is  well  chosen 
as  designating  the  mental  uncleanness,  the  ever-renewed 
corruption,  the  increasing  defilement,  which  attend  the 
insatiate  lust.  This  darkest  among  dark  sins  rests  al- 
most exclusively  on  the  social  and  spiritual  wrongs  it 
suffers  and  inflicts. 

In  historical  growth  the  lowest  point  in  sexual  relation 
and  the  primitive  point  in  human  life  do  not  necessarily 
correspond.  Human  life  may  sink  as  well  as  rise. 
Monogamy  may  exist  in  conflict  with  polygamy  ;  and 
polygamy,  under  the  poverty  and  depression  of  defeated 
and  persecuted  tribes,  may  assume  lower  phases.  Along 
the  line  of  general  development  there  lie,  above  and 
below,  sporadic  results  which  do  not  represent  the  rul- 
ing tendency.  It  is  too  easy  a  social  theory  to  assume 
that  all  which  now  offers  itself  as  basest  in  human  life 
is  basal,  and  that  we  have  only  to  trace  thence  the  steps 
of  historical  development.1 

§  5.  The  relation  of  parents  to  children  rests  on  nat- 
ural affection,  on  interest,  on  social  position,  and  on  spir- 
itual affections.  Men,  in  common  with  all  animals,  have 
natural  affections,  - —  feelings  which  spring  irresistibly 
from  physical  connections.  These  are  slowly  limited  and 
supplemented  by  spiritual  impulses.  In  the  degree  in 
which  man's  condition  is  allied  to  that  of  the  brute,  we 

1  "  Unity  of  Nature,"  Duke  of  Argyle. 


42  CUSTOMS. 

may  believe  that  these  more  brutish  impulses  prevail, 
and  serve  their  primary  purpose  of  guarding  the  family. 
It  is  plain  that  natural  selection  must  act  vigorously  in 
favor  of  those  races  in  which  the  natural  affections 
maintain  the  household. 

Interest  comes  in  at  an  early  period  to  sustain  natu- 
ral affection.  In  a  period  of  conflict  the  strength  of  a 
household  depends  on  sons  and  daughters.  So  true  is 
this  that  crimes  of  violence  were  first  conceived  as  di- 
rected against  the  family  and  open  to  its  claims  of  rep- 
aration, rather  than  as  against  the  individuals  and  the 
community. 

The  slow  entrance  and  ultimate  prevalence  of  social 
and  spiritual  sentiments  at  length  unite  liberty  to 
strength  in  the  household.  These  anticipate  the  strife 
and  division  which  are  ready  to  attend  on  the  lower  im- 
pulses. There  is  no  growth  of  a  truly  spiritual  order 
which  does  not  accrue  to  the  household.  Whatever 
foliage  and  fruit  adorn  life,  they  are  sure  to  cluster 
the  thickest  and  hang  the  heaviest  on  these  domestic 
branches. 

The  contention  of  authority  and  liberty  in  the  house- 
hold is  seen  in  that  arbitrary  limit  of  authority  which 
we  term  "  coming  of  age."  The  Roman  family,  in  its 
unusual  strength,  assigned  twenty-five  years  as  this  limit, 
and  then  greatly  restricted  the  emancipation.  In  the 
household,  which  has  come  under  the  government  of 
spiritual  incentives,  liberty  arises  continuously  and  im- 
perceptibly out  of  authority.  There  are  no  definite 
limits  between  them.  The  seed-vessel  drops  its  seeds 
in  no  more  ready  obedience  to  nature  than  the  house^ 
hold  its  offspring,  capable  of  a  larger  life. 


RELATION  OF  CHILDREN  TO  ONE  ANOTHER.      43 

§  6.  The  third  relation,  that  of  children  to  each  other, 
is,  in  some  sense,  more  ultimate  and  universal  than 
either  of  the  other  two.  It  is,  in  its  perfection,  the 
best  fruits  of  the  family.  Equality,  that  equality  which 
takes  the  widest  range  in  civic  institutions,  is  its  ruling 
idea.  We  pass  from  the  liberty  of  the  household  to  the 
liberty  of  the  state.  Narrow  interests  and  more  re- 
stricted ends  of  organization  are  for  a  long  time  in  con- 
tention with  the  freedom  of  the  family.  Thus  diversity 
of  values  and  rights  have  attached  to  sons  as  contrasted 
with  daughters,  and  to  the  eldest  son  in  comparison 
with  younger  sons. 

Subjection  or  liberty  will  prevail  in  the  household  ac- 
cording as  organization  or  as  nurture  is  the  ruling  idea. 
If  the  purpose  of  the  family  is  to  frame  an  institution 
whose  collective  interest  is  somewhat  distinct  from,  and 
decisively  superior  to,  that  of  its  members,  if  the  idea 
of  government  on.  which  it  proceeds  is  monarchical,  then 
we  shall  have  a  subordination  in  children  fitted  to  carry 
out  this  purpose.  If  the  primary  purpose  of  the  house- 
hold is  conceived  to  be  nurture,  the  bringing  of  men  and 
women  into  the  full  possession  of  their  powers,  then  we 
shall  have  equality,  liberty,  generous  interaction,  as  its 
organic  law.  Nurture  implies  that  large  estimate  of  in- 
dividual worth  which  puts  men  on  essentially  the  same 
basis,  and  makes  the  common  interest  an  aggregate  of 
personal  welfare.  As  long  as  the  family  embraces  in 
part  civic  functions,  as  long  as  the  father  i<s  priest  and 
king,  the  idea  of  nurture  will  be  subordinate  to  that  of 
government.  Thus  the  feudal  system  gathered  in  the 
family  as  a  part  of  its  own  military  construction,  and 
unity  and  responsibility  were  supported   by   primogen- 


44  CUSTOMS. 

iture.  Around  this  construction,  securing  direct  and 
continuous  representation,  —  imposed  on  the  household 
by  interests  foreign  to  itself — there  easily  gathered,  as 
in  England,  the  pride  of  family,  the  sense  of  perpetuity, 
and  the  visible  continuity  of  the  whole.  Thus,  while 
the  motives  to  equality  grew  in  the  household,  year  by 
year,  those  which  were  involved  in  traditional  honors 
grew  with  them ;  and  it  became,  here  as  elsewhere, 
difficult  to  replace  authority  with  liberty,  visible  and 
exterior  order  with  invisible  and  spiritual  construc- 
tion. Both  ends,  government  and  nurture,  are  embraced 
in  the  household  with  different  degrees  of  power  in  dif- 
ferent periods,  and  hence  there  is  put  upon  it,  in  com- 
mon with  the  community,  the  entire  labor  of  transition. 
The  individual  life  must  flourish  in  true  vigor,  in  thor- 
ough self-control,  before  the  defences,  first  set  up  in  its 
behalf  but  transformed  by  progress  into  barriers,  can  be 
finally  thrust  aside. 

§  7.  The  family  is  the  school  of  social  relations.  In 
it  we  learn  the  duties  of  life  in  a  form  and  under  con- 
ditions which  make  their  recognition  comparatively  easy. 
The  family,  in  the  outset,  passing  into  the  clan,  the  tribe, 
is  the  community.  The  relations  of  the  two  glide  into 
each  other,  and  are  in  a  high  degree  identical.  The 
more  primitive,  the  plainer,  obligations  which  attach 
to  those  of  the  same  blood  spread  into  the  community. 
Later,  when  society  is  more  heterogeneous,  and  shelter 
extends  further  out  from  the  household,  family  ties 
still  serve  to  define  the  temper  which  rules  in  our  re- 
lations to  our  fellow-men.  Nearness  and  remoteness  are 
measured  from  the  family  centre ;  interest  and  indiffer- 
ence turn  on  its  connections.     When,  at  length,  we  rise 


THE  FAMILY  A  SCHOOL  OF  SOCIAL  DUTIES.      45 

to  the  idea  of  the  fatherhood  of  God  and  the  brother- 
hood of  the  race,  the  conception  has  grown  up  and 
ripened  under  these  primitive  connections. 

The  household  is  the  seed-bed  of  the  spiritual  affec- 
tions, the  higher,  more  subtile,  more  generous  feelings 
which  bind  us  to  one  another.  The  appetites  and  natu- 
ral affections  and  interests  of  the  family  life  are  the 
coarse  soil  in  which  slow-growing  insights,  the  germs 
of  better  things,  are  planted,  improved,  and  replanted, 
till  we  have  something  which,  in  its  forecast  and  ideal 
force,  suggests  to  us  the  garden  of  God. 

Here,  also,  men  first  meet  law,  and  first  win  liberty. 
Government  in  the  outset  rests  in  the  household  on 
physical  strength.  An  authority  is  set  up  which  those 
subject  to  it  cannot  dispute.  This  authority  is  tem- 
pered, on  the  one  side,  by  affection,  and  on  the  other, 
by  complete  dependence.  It  is  an  authority  made  right- 
ful by  its  inevitableness.  With  each  step  of  develop- 
ment this  authority  is  softened,  refined,  extended,  till 
at  length,  fully  sanctioned  by  the  moral  affections,  it 
passes  into  perfect  liberty. 

The  manner  in  which  the  child  meets  this  first  form 
of  law,  so  wonderfully  sustained  by  natural  sanctions, 
by  interests  and  dangers,  fears  and  affections,  deter- 
mines very  largely  how  he  will  meet  all  law  ;  how  he 
will  solve  the  one  supreme  problem  of  bringing  his  own 
impulses  constructively  and  pleasurably  under  that  com- 
prehensive net-work  of  law  which  the  world  casts  over 
him.  Weakness  and  failure  in  the  household  carry 
weakness  and  failure  everywhere.  Success  here  gives 
us  hardy  plants,  which  can  be  hopefully  transferred  to 
society. 


46  CUSTOMS. 

§  8.  There  are  various  social  problems  which  turn 
directly  with  us  on  the  construction  of  the  family. 
One  of  the  most  important  of  these  is  the  subjection 
of  women.  The  subjection  which  woman  suffers,  and 
which  some  regard  as  deeply  involved  in  the  nature  of 
things,  is  subjection  to  the  household.  It  is  not  sub- 
jection to  men  as  men,  but  to  men  as  husbands,  fathers, 
brothers,  rulers,  within  and  beyond  the  family.  This 
subjection  often  leads  to  personal  tyranny  ;  but  this 
tyranny  is  its  abuse,  not  its  use. 

This  subjection  rests  primarily  on  a  physical  basis. 
It  is  a  control  of  those  who  are  weaker  by  those  who 
are  stronger,  of  those  who  can  most  easily  be  ruled 
by  those  who  can  most  easily  rule.  As  long  as  order 
is  the  outcome  of  force,  this  government  is  inevitable. 
From  this  physical  dependence  there  arises,  necessa- 
rily, social  dependence.  Methods  of  feeling,  habits  of 
thought,  estimates  of  worth,  become  inwrought  into  the 
very  nature  of  men  and  of  women,  and  into  the  entire 
structure  of  society,  which  extend  and  sustain  this 
subjection.  A  dependence,  whose  germ  is  physical, 
gains,  by  virtue  of  this  aftergrowth  of  social  relations, 
a  naturalness  and  inevitableness  which  make  it  diffi- 
cult so  much  as  to  raise  the  question  of  fitness  and 
justness.1 

A  subjection  so  controlling  in  the  household  must  en- 
ter of  course  into  civic  rights.  What  women  may  pos- 
sess, what  they  may  do  with  what  they  possess,  how 
far  they  may  control  their  own  persons,  in  what  way 
their  personal  rights  are  to  be  defended  under  the  law, 
what  public  privileges  and  duties  are  to   be    assigned 

1  "The  Reform  against  Nature,"  Horace  Bushnell. 


SUBJECTION  OF   WOMEN.  47 

them,  are  questions  to  be  settled  in  the  presence  of 
this  primary  notion,  the  subjection  of  women  to  the 
wants  of  the  household.  If  this  idea  is  justly  formed, 
its  social  corollaries  go  with  it. 

English  common  law  has  been  narrow  in  defining 
women's  rights;  but  it  has  been  so,  not  from  a  spirit  of 
oppression  toward  women,  but  in  consequence  of  a  high 
conception  of  the  unity  of  the  family,  and  a  desire  to 
maintain  its  strength  within  itself.  The  rights  of  the 
household  and  the  rights  of  woman  have  fallen  into  un- 
toward opposition.  The  power  committed  to  the  hus- 
band was  entrusted  to  him  as  the  ruler  and  defender  of 
the  household,  but  was  not  adequately  restrained  in  its 
use.  The  whole  system  was  a  development,  even  if  a 
severe  development,  of  the  one  idea  of  a  natural  subor- 
dination of  women,  defined  by  the  wants  of  the  family. 
If  this  underlying  idea  is  sound,  adequate,  and  of  uni- 
versal force,  then  reform  at  this  point  can  consist  only 
in  softening  it  in  its  application.  If,  however,  this  first 
conception  of  the  household  rests  on  physical  relations, 
which  can  be  and  are  to  be  subordinated  to  higher  spir- 
itual ones,  then  reform  consists  in  shifting  the  construc- 
tion of  the  household,  in  its  primary  motives,  from  the 
one  basis  to  the  other  as  rapidly  as  opportunity  is  given, 
as  rapidly  as  the  household  is  prepared  for  the  strain  of 
the  transition. 

§  9.  This  transfer  is  successfully  going  forward  in 
various  directions,  with  or  without  our  assent.  This  is 
evident  in  common  relations,  as  in  the  freedom  granted 
to  women  in  the  acquisition  and  use  of  property. 
Little  liberty  was  given  to  married  women  in  this  par- 
ticular under  common  law,  and  little  was  won  by  un- 
married women. 


48  CUSTOMS. 

The  earnings  of  the  wife  belonged  to  the  husband,  and 
her  chief  protection  lay  in  a  partial  provision  for  her 
wants  on  the  death  of  her  master.  With  the  inability 
to  hold  property  naturally  went  the  inability  to  win  it. 
Most  lucrative  employments  were  closed  to  woman,  and 
her  life,  in  its  outlook  toward  labor,  was  shut  up  to  the 
household.  On  the  side  of  toil,  she  was  the  servant  of 
the  household. 

This  narrow  and  often  severe  service  rested  back,  in 
men's  minds,  for  its  justification  —  when  it  did  not  re- 
pose on  simply  brute  force  —  on  the  fact  of  mother- 
hood, which  makes  the  nurture  of  children  a  primary 
duty,  circumscribing  all  other  duties,  and  on  a  physical 
weakness  and  refinement  which  seem  to  demand  the 
shelter  of  the  household.  To  these  essentially  great 
ideas,  considering  the  phase  of  development  to  which 
they  belonged,  was  added  the  notion  of  intellectual  infe- 
riority, an  inferiority  in  part  the  product  of  prolonged 
dependence,  and  in  part  an  exaggerated  conventional 
sentiment,  due  to  diversity  of  gifts,  called  out  by  nat- 
ural causes  and  nourished  by  this  very  subjection. 

On  this  coarse  but  hardy  stock,  society,  in  its  develop- 
ment toward  culture,  grafted  the  notion  that  the  truest 
delicacy,  the  highest  refinement  in  female  character,  do 
not  admit  rude  contact  with  the  world  at  large,  but  must 
be  favored  by  seclusion  and  by  a  peculiar  form  of  inno- 
cence which  approaches  very  closely  to  ignorance. 

In  completion  of  these  refined  feelings,  or  in  conjunc- 
tion with  them,  there  were  certain  classes  of  society,  not 
necessarily  the  lowest,  which  entertained  very  different 
and  very  gross  sentiments.  The  lowest  women  were  de- 
graded to  a  baseness  and  brutality  that  made  them  the 


SUBJECTION   OF   WOMEN.  49 

antipodes  of  those  in  circles  of  refinement  from  which 
they  had  fallen.  By  some  strange  perversity,  a  most 
wicked  conception  of  womanly  nature  seemed  to  find  its 
way  in  the  minds  of  many  men,  formal  partakers  in  this 
conventional  refinement,  and  to  unite  in  their  thoughts, 
these  two,  the  best  and  the  worst  of  women,  by  a  sen- 
sual service  most  degrading  to  all  concerned.  A  fas- 
tidious and  overstrained  delicacy  has  often  become  the 
occasion  of  conceptions  and  actions  most  radically  op- 
posed to  its  ostensible  character. 

Women  were  also,  in  spite  of  this  notion  of  refine- 
ment, when  compelled  to  toil  for  a  livelihood,  left  to  the 
severest  possible  pressure  of  circumstances.  No  class 
has  suffered  as  they  have  suffered  from  the  sweating 
process. 

The  economic  laws  of  wages,  unsoftened  by  custom  or 
by  combination,  have  acted  powerfully  in  depressing  in- 
dustrial effort  on  the  part  of  women.  Their  wages  have 
compared  unfavorably  with  those  of  men.  Many  causes 
have  concurred  in  securing  this  result.  The  most  obvi- 
ous and  influential  one  has  been  the  law  of  supply  and 
demand.  Comparatively  few  employments  being  open 
to  women,  the  supply  of  labor  in  these  departments 
has  exceeded  the  demand.  As  the  services  of  women 
are  frequently,  in  one  particular  or  another,  inferior  to 
those  of  men,  this  fact  has  kept  down  their  wages.  An 
unjust  conventional  opinion  has  extensively  prevailed, 
putting  the  labor  of  women  quite  below  its  true  value. 
This  has  worked  strongly  in  the  same  direction.  Wo- 
men have,  in  many  cases,  added  the  returns  of  work  to 
means  of  support  independent  of  it,  or  have  been  under 
light  claims  of  expenditure,  and  so  have  been  able  to 


50  CUSTOMS. 

offer  tneir  services  at  depressed  rates.  They  have  also 
been  almost  wholly  without  the  defence  of  combination, 
and  so  have  come  fully  under  the  heaviest  pressure  of 
the  market. 

In  spite,  however,  of  these  obstacles,  real  and  facti- 
tious, there  has  been  a  rapid  improvement  in  the  eco- 
nomic conditions  secured  by  women.  Various  important 
employments  are  fully  open  to  them.  Other  occupa- 
tions are  partially  conceded.  Barriers  are  everywhere 
giving  way.  The  professions  are  entered,  if  not  fully 
entered.  It  is  scarcely  worth  while  to  offer  statistics 
of  the  change.  One  can  hardly  transcribe  them  before 
they  are  decisively  improved.  The  economic  world  is 
so  far  captured  as  to  offer  no  serious  resistance.  Wages 
are  coming  freely  under  economic  principles,  and  preju- 
dice, the  great  check  in  this  movement,  is  disappearing. 
Workmen  are  disposed  by  good-will  and  in  self-defence 
to  accept  equality  of  remuneration.  They  find  this  a 
more  tenable  ground  of  competition  than  the  old  one  — 
unequal  wages  for  the  same  work. 

Carroll  D.  Wright,  in  the  Forum  of  May,  1892,  gives 
the  following  percentages  expressing  the  proportion  of 
women  in  different  departments  of  labor :  — 

Federal  Employment  12.00 

Professional  Service  46.26 

Personal  Service .     .  40.66 

Trade 11.09 

Concurrent  with  this  advance  of  women  in  indepen- 
dent productive  power  has  been  an  equally  marked 
improvement  in  educational  advantages.  Public  edu- 
cation   in  high    schools    has    been  only  too  exclusively 


Transportation 

.29 

Agriculture 

.52 

Fisheries 

.09 

Manufacture    . 

28.58 

POLITICAL   RIGHTS   OF   WOMEN.  51 

appropriated  by  them.  In  the  Western  States,  co-educa- 
tion in  higher  institutions  has  become  the  well-nigh 
universal  custom.  Though  the  Eastern  States  have  not 
been  able  to  reach  this  mark,  they  have  in  part  atoned 
for  their  failure  by  providing  many  colleges  as  separate 
means  of  doing  a  like  work.  They  have  yielded  the 
substantial  contention  without  wholly  amending  the 
social  sentiment  out  of  which  the  evil  sprang. 

This  increased  independence  and  improved  education 
have  helped  to  put  the  marriage  relation  on  those  terms 
of  a  free  spiritual  contract  which  prepare  the  way  for 
its  fortunate  formation.  A  deep  descent  in  the  oppo- 
site direction  is  disclosed  in  India,  where  the  life  of  the 
woman  is  wholly  wrapped  up  in  marriage.  Betrothal, 
marriage,  and  the  results  of  marriage,  comprehend  all 
her  interests.  The  suttee  was  an  expression  of  the 
extinction  of  the  life  of  a  woman  when  it  ceased  to  be 
contained  in  the  life  of  a  man.  She  was  not  even  a 
bearable  "  relict." 

The  characterization  of  Governor  Andrew  of  the  women 
of  Massachusetts  as  "  anxious  and  aimless,"  is  losing 
something  of  its  point.  The  free  movement  they  are 
securing  -in  the  world,  their  widening  out-reach  into  the 
aims  and  labors  we  all  share  in  common,  fit  them  the 
better  to  be  the  voluntary  and  helpful  consorts  of  men. 

§  10.  The  rights  in  connection  with  which  the  con- 
test has  lasted  longest  and  is  still  warmest,  are  political 
rights.  Civic  rights,  expressed  in  equal  laws  equally 
administered,  have  been  more  freely  conceded  than 
political  franchises.  The  rights  of  property  and  per- 
son are  approaching  justice,  but  the  right  of  unre- 
strained political  activity  is  but  very  partially  conceded. 


52  CUSTOMS. 

This  concession,  however,  is  so  completley  involved  in 
the  progress  already  made  that  it  cannot  be  long  with- 
held. It  would  doubtless  have  been  granted  before  this 
had  not  the  majority  of  cultivated  women  drawn  back 
from  the  altered  sentiment  and  added  responsibilities 
which  it  has  been  thought  would  accompany  it. 

Women  have  essentially  the  same  interest  in  good 
government  as  men.  They  should  have  the  same  rights 
and  duties  in  securing  good  government  —  the  bulwark 
of  defence  for  all  our  gains  —  as  men.  If  there  are  any 
reasons  adverse  to  this  natural  conclusion,  they  must  be 
made  out  in  the  clearest  and  most  practical  way.  The 
antecedent  presumption  in  favor  of  identical  rights  is 
great. 

Women  have  also  essentially  the  same  powers  with 
which  to  apprehend  and  discharge  the  duties  of  citizen- 
ship. Whatever  diversity  of  gifts  there  may  be  between 
men  and  women,  it  does  not  touch  their  ability  to  under- 
stand and  watch  over  these  vital  interests. 

Women  have  also,  in  addition  to  the  common  wants 
and  powers  which  they  share  with  men,  certain  wants 
and  powers,  especially  those  associated  with  the  house- 
hold, which  belong  to  them  in  an  unusual  degree,  and 
which  they  are,  therefore,  especially  lifted  to  urge  and 
protect.  Diversity  between  men  and  women,  as  well  as 
agreement  between  them,  calls  for  concurrent  counsel 
and  action.  The  public  welfare  is  made  up  of  the  wel- 
fare of  men,  women,  and  children,  and  a  portion  of  this 
welfare  it  falls  peculiarly  to  women  to  understand  and 
watch  over.  It  is  wrong  to  compel  one  whose  personal 
responsibilities  are  large  to  discharge  them  unnecessa- 
rily through  others. 


POLITICAL   RIGHTS   OF   WOMEN.  53 

The  most  conclusive  reason  in  behalf  of  this  enlarge- 
ment of  political  rights  is  that  it  would  tend  to  addi- 
tional development  of  personal  life.  Thought,  feeling, 
and  action  would  be  correspondingly  widened.  One- 
half  the  human  household  would  obtain  a  larger  horizon, 
and  that  without  robbing  any  man  of  his  vision.  So 
far  as  suffrage  can  be  spoken  of  as  a  natural  right,  that 
right  lies  just  here  —  that  every  human  being  is  entitled 
to  the  fullest  exercise  of  all  his  powers,  unless  the  well- 
being  of  society  opposes  a  distinct  and  sufficient  objec- 
tion to  it.  In  the  progress  of  events  the  presumption 
gains  invincible  force  that  the  interests  of  society  are 
concurrent  with  the  interests  of  its  individual  members ; 
and  that  whatever  difficulty  is  in  the  way  of  uniting 
the  two  is  superficial  and  transient.  Only  on  this  sup- 
position is  the  perfection  of  society  possible.  Universal 
participation  is  involved  in  this  perfection. 

The  fact  also  that  there  are  no  fast  lines  in  social 
action  at  which  barriers  can  be  successful]}-  set  up  to 
the  ebb  and  flow  of  influence,  leads  to  the  conclusion 
that  suffrage  must  ultimately  be  conceded.  It  is  far 
better  that  women  should  exercise  political  influence 
openly  and  directly,  than  by  indirection  and  in  secret. 
Persuasion  is  wholesome  in  the  measure  in  which  it  is 
avowed.  As  long  as  social  growth  pushes  toward  en- 
larged activity,  we  must  find  pleasure  in  yielding  to  the 
pressure.  The  growth  must  find  its  limits  within  itself, 
not  without  itself.  If  this  reform  is  "  against  nature," 
then  nature  will  reject  it;  the  space  conceded  to  rife 
will  not  be  occupied  by  life.  In  any  case  of  doubt  it  is 
better,  on  our  part,  to  allow  life  to  define  its  own  bounds, 
than  to  run  the   risk  of   ourselves    defining   them   too 


54  CUSTOMS. 

narrowly.  Men  have  done  most  of  their  fighting  against 
God  by  a  too  determinate  and  restricted  construction 
of  the  ideas  which  underlie  the  world. 

Certainly  the  disposition  to  concede  suffrage  to  women 
who  pay  taxes  hints  at  no  true  line  of  division.  It 
implies  that  an  accident  of  life  —  an  accident  that  we 
have  learned  to  disregard  in  man  —  is  more  significant 
than  life  itself. 

§  11.  The  objections  to  this  grant  are  obstinate  if  not 
cogent.  Like  the  roots  of  a  tree  which  has  grown  in 
the  cleft  of  a  rock,  they  run  far  and  deep  in  all  the 
fissures  of  the  solid  bed  of  conventional  sentiment. 

One  of  the  earlier  and  more  weighty  of  the  obstacles 
to  the  participation  of  women  in  political  rights,  has 
been  her  relation  to  the  household,  the  exacting  claims 
of  the  household,  the  mischief  arising  from  their  neglect. 
The  unity  of  the  household,  and  the  inevitable  conces- 
sions involved  in  it,  have  led  many  to  feel  that  women 
were  wiser  in  accepting  a  curtailment  of  political  rights, 
than  in  any  degree  jeopardizing  the  chief  interests  com- 
mitted to  them ;  that  in  some  sense  the  duties  of  women 
were  too  sacred  to  admit  of  any  disturbance.  Others, 
putting  the  same  idea  in  a  different  form,  have  regarded 
the  household  as  one  organic  body,  finding  complete  and 
adequate  representation  in  the  husband  and  father. 
There  is  Sufficient  force  in  these  reasons  to  explain  the 
action  of  the  past,  but  hardly  sufficient  force  to  justify, 
in  perpetuity,  limitations  which  the  growing  vigor  of 
our  spiritual  life  is  rendering  unnecessary.  The  mo- 
ment the  unity  of  the  family  is  consistent  with  an  exten- 
sion of  personal  liberty,  women  are  entitled  to  that 
extension ;  and  that  extension  in  turn  will  strengthen 


OBJECTIONS   TO  POLITICAL  RIGHTS.  55 

this  unity.  To  refuse  enlargement  is  to  check  that 
gracious  development  of  the  home  which  has  made  it 
possible.  Precisely  the  same  temper  which  causes  a 
woman  to  feel,  and  to  desire  to  fulfil,  a  public  duty,  will 
govern  her  in  the  recognition  and  fulfilment  of  private 
duties.  She  can  only  the  more  certainly  and  safely  be 
trusted  with  a  discharge  of  the  latter  when  her  horizon 
includes  the  former  as  well.  The  soul  must  be  left  to 
define  its  powers.  To  throw  it  back  upon  itself  by  re- 
pression is  to  weaken  it  at  the  centre  as  well  as  at  the 
circumference.  An  arbitrary  unity  in  the  household 
which  consists  in  the  unquestioned  rule  of  a  master  be- 
comes, in  the  progress  of  events,  the  occasion  of  a  deep 
division,  which  may  be  hidden  but  cannot  be  removed. 
This  narrow  view  of  the  household  precludes  the  full 
gain  of  her  unfolding  social  life.  Reconstruction  falls 
to  the  household  in  common  with  all  other  things. 
It  is  objected,  more  superficially,  that  women  do  not 
render  military  duty,  that  they  do  not  protect  the 
state,  that  they  would  be  unable  to  enforce  any  law 
whose  passage  they  had  secured.  This  objection  rests 
heavily  back  on  a  dark  and  distressful  past.  As  long 
as  physical  force  is  not  simply  the  last  resort  of  the 
state,  but  its  underlying  law,  its  criterion  of  right,  this 
line  of  argument  holds.  When,  however,  the  primary 
adjustments,  and  the  great  majority  of  adjustments, 
within  and  without  the  state,  rest  on  intrinsic  fitness,  are 
instituted  in  protection  of  what  we  deem  personal  and 
collective  rights,  then  this  reasoning  grows  weak  and 
ought  to  disappear.  To  offer  these  considerations  in 
permanent  estoppel  of  the  claims  of  women  is  to  exclude 
them    from    the    gains    of   a    growing    good-will    which 


56  CUSTOMS. 

makes  the  world  infinitely  better  for  us  all.  Men  are 
not  judged  by  this  test.  A  large  share  of  male  citizens 
in  our  country  are  exempted  from  military  service ; 
and  all  of  them  are  exempted  during  a  portion  of  their 
lives.  This  fact  is  not  thought  to  incapacitate  them  to 
render  other  forms  of  service  to  the  state. 

Women  have  interests  identical  with  those  of  men  in 
the  safety  of  the  nation,  in  the  enforcement  of  its  laws, 
in  the  preservation  of  peace,  in  the  waging  of  war.  Her 
convictions,  her  sufferings,  her  hopes,  her  claims,  are  a 
part  of  the  problem  to  be  dealt  with,  and  are  better 
dealt  with  when  they  gain  the  fullest  and  most  rational 
expression.  Society  no  longer  rests  in  such  an  exclusive 
way  on  physical  force  as  to  make  it  the  controlling  con- 
sideration in  adjusting  the  interior  dependencies  of  our 
civic  life.  Women  are  also  taking  ever  more  an  impor- 
tant part  in  war,  bearing  and  reducing  its  sufferings. 
They  win  in  the  rear  of  the  army  and  in  its  hospitals 
the  right  to  intervene  in  counsel. 

Probably  the  objection  which  least  admits  of  forcible 
statement,  and  yet  for  most  minds  is  as  influential  as 
any  other,  is  that  which  arises  from  the  conventional 
ideal  of  womanly  character.  If  the  highest  ideal  is  in- 
consistent with  interest  in  political  duties  on  the  part  of 
women,  and  a  personal  discharge  of  them,  then  we  may 
be  assured  that  the  progress  of  years  will  tend  toward 
her  seclusion  from  public  life,  not  toward  her  participa- 
tion in  it.  But  the  force  by  which  this  inner  fitness  of 
things  asserts  itself  can  be  left,  and  must  be  left,  to 
declare  itself  in  its  own  measure  and  form.  We  must 
be  very  sure  of  our  ground  before  we  can  wisely  employ 
so  rude  an  instrument  as  civil  law  in  sketching  the  out- 


OBJECTIONS    TO   POLITICAL   RIGHTS.  57 

line  of  perfect  character.  To  restrain  women  in  these 
weighty  forms  of  action  is  to  assume  that  a  participa- 
tion in  civic  rights  is  an  obvious  and  mischievous  im- 
propriety. If  it  is  not  such  an  impropriety,  the  legal 
restriction  which  implies  it  is  exceedingly  offensive  — 
as  offensive  as  that  which  attaches  to  a  law  prohibiting 
a  minister  of  the  Gospel  from  holding  civil  office. 

Is  there  any  inner  ground  of  reason  in  the  ideal  of 
loveliness  which  interposes  itself  between  women  and 
a  participation  in  public  life  ?  Doubtless  there  is  in 
some  phases  of  society.  For  the  same  reason  that  we 
regard  with  aversion  the  direct  participation  of  women 
in  the  carnage  of  war,  should  we  regret  to  see  her  take 
a  hand  in  politics,  in  themselves  unseemly  and  debased. 

Men  and  women  alike,  and  women  somewhat  more 
than  men,  are  marred  by  corrupt  methods.  Yet  here 
lies  the  gist  of  the  argument  in  her  behalf.  The  full 
redemption  of  our  political  life  calls  at  once  for  a  cor- 
rection of  method,  and  an  improved  temper  in  those 
who  guide  it.  An  evil  cannot  be  urged  as  an  objection 
to  the  very  means  which  are  fitted  to  remove  it.  The 
claim  of  women  to  the  free  exercise  of  political  rights 
lies,  as  a  whole,  in  the  line  of  a  more  seemly  and  consid- 
erate use  of  those  rights.  All  improvement  brings  with 
it,  in  its  earlier  stages,  some  undesirable  conflict,  some 
bending  to  uncomfortable  labor,  some  soiling  of  the 
hands.  These  results  we  accept  in  behalf  of  the  better 
time  when  things  shall  once  more  be  set  in  order,  and 
the  improved  method  have  become  the  customary  one. 
It  belongs  to  the  very  nature  of  reform  that,  for  the 
moment,  it  creates  incongruities  that  are  ultimately  to 
pass  into  higher  harmonies. 


58  CUSTOMS. 

The  ideal  which  stands  in  the  way  of  this  particular 
development  is  not  the  true,  comprehensive  ideal  about 
which  society  is  to  be  built.  The  character  of  women, 
as  an  ideal  spiritual  product,  suffers  more  frequently 
from  the  want  of  intellectual  and  social  strength  than 
from  its  presence  in  too  rugged  a  form ;  from  an  undue 
narrowness  in  her  experiences  of  life,  than  from  too 
much  eagerness  and  boldness  in  their  pursuit.  Strength 
and  beauty  are  in  the  sanctuary  of  God,  and  the  heart 
of  women  is  pre-eminently  that  sanctuary.  Growing 
power,  increasing  intelligence,  an  element  of  fear  as 
well  as  of  love,  are  the  elements  of  the  highest  ideal  of 
womanly  character. 

We  would  be  cautious  in  our  inferences,  but  the  old 
ideal  has  always  seemed  to  have  in  it  a  near  or  a  remote 
taint  of  licentiousness.  Women  were  at  liberty  to  grow 
in  every  direction  which  left  them  fragile,  tender,  and 
timorous,  but  not  in  those  directions  which  rendered 
them  sturdy,  self-contained,  and  resistful.  They  were 
not  to  be  as  men,  a  dependent,  independent  embodi- 
ment of  a  divine  idea ;  possessed  of  a  life  that  supple- 
mented life,  and  yet  was  itself,  to  its  very  verge,  life. 
In  submission  to  a  more  imperious  nature  and  appetite, 
they  were  remanded  to  a  position  which  left  them  essen- 
tially defenceless  in  the  severest  struggles  of  existence. 

This  question  of  ideals  takes  hold  of  the  profoundest 
changes  in  our  spiritual  being,  and  must  be  left  to  work 
itself  out  freely  under  the  subtile  forms  of  life.  Our 
ideals  are  our  own  experiences  softened,  harmonized, 
and  brought  pictorially  to  a  focus  under  the  clearest 
light  we  can  throw  upon  them.  The  experience  and  the 
ideal  must  expand  together,  or  we  shall  lose  the  growth 
of  a  living  interaction, 


DIVORCE.  59 

§  12.  A  second  urgent  social  problem  which  hinges 
on  the  family  is  that  of  divorce.  During  the  last  forty- 
years  there  has  been  not  only  a  marked,  but  a  startling, 
increase  of  divorces.  The  questions  arise  at  once  :  What 
are  the  causes  of  this  increase  ?  How  far  do  they  indi- 
cate or  occasion  a  breaking  down  of  the  ties  of  the 
household  ?     What  are  the  remedies  of  this  evil  ? 

Nowhere  has  this  multiplication  of  divorces  been 
more  marked  than  in  the  United  States.  In  Germany 
and  in  England  the  movement  has  been  much  slower. 
In  France  it  has  been  recently  accelerated,  especially  by 
the  divorce  law  of  1884.  The  Report  of  the  Commis- 
sioner of  Labor  for  1889  gives  fully  the  statistics  of 
marriage  and  of  divorce  in  the  United  States.  In  the 
twenty  years  commencing  with  1867,  population  in- 
creased 60  per  cent,  and  divorces  increased  156.9  per 
cent.  There  was  an  increase  in  this  period  of  each  suc- 
ceeding five  years  over  each  preceding  five.  The 
change  was  more  rapid  in  the  Northern  and  Western 
States  and  less  rapid  in  the  Southern  States.  In  these 
twenty  years  there  were  328,716  divorces  in  the  United 
States.     In  1867  there  were  9,937,  and  in  1886,  25,535. 

There  is  in  these  facts  the  plainest  indication  of  vig- 
orous, unusual,  and  somewhat  persistent  forces.  What 
were  these  forces  ?  We  are  able  easily  to  indicate  the 
more  prominent  ones.  A  portion  of  them  have  been  the 
unavoidable  incidents  of  progress,  and  have  involved  an 
overbalance  of  good  in  spite  of  the  great  evils  associated 
with  them. 

One  of  the  more  wide-reaching  of  these  causes  has 
been  the  current  criticism  of  religious  beliefs,  and  the 
resistance  to  religious  authority  which  has  accompanied 


60  CUSTOMS. 

it.  In  those  countries  in  which  the  Catholic  Faith  —  or 
the  prevailing  faith  —  has  been  least  shaken,  there  has 
been  comparatively  little  change  in  the  marriage  rela- 
tion. In  Paris,  where  faith  is  most  wavering  and  un- 
certain, there  is  one  divorce  in  sixteen  marriages.  In 
this  country  religious  obligation,  as  a  traditional  law, 
has  been  much  weakened,  and  the  sanctions  of  marriage 
have  been  correspondingly  reduced.  Social  sentiment 
on  the  religious  side  has  lost  its  censoriousness,  and  it 
has  also  lost  its  sanctity. 

The  various  and  changeable  character  of  our  religious 
beliefs  and  religious  sects  has  concurred  in  this  result. 
No  one  faith,  in  the  presence  of  so  many  forms  of  faith, 
attains  all  the  authority  that  would  be  otherwise  open  to 
it.  The  tie  of  marriage  has  been  to  such  a  degree  under 
the  protection  of  the  church  and  enforced  by  it,  that 
weakness  or  diversity  iu  religious  belief  has  acted  unfa- 
vorably on  it. 

The  commingling  of  nationalities  in  the  United  States 
has  also  tended  to  the  same  result.  In  a  confusion  of 
customs  and  sentiments,  none  retain  their  entire  force. 
There  is  a  loosening  in  many  undesirable  ways  of  the 
accumulated  restraints  of  centuries.  The  lax  method 
escapes  censure. 

Under  the  prevalence  of  these  influences,  the  real  evil 
—  the  injury  to  the  household  —  has  not  been  so  great 
as  the  apparent  evil.  Much  wrong  in  the  family  has 
hitherto  been  endured  in  silence  ;  it  now  openly  breaks 
the  bonds  it  had  previously  weakened.  Says  Mr. 
Lecky,  —  and  very  few  are  better  able  to  pronounce  on 
the  facts,  —  "  It  is  notorious  that  the  lowest  standard  of 
domestic  morality    in   Europe   may   often   be  found    in 


DIVORCE.  61 

countries  and  in  periods  in  which  divorce  was  absolutely 
forbidden,  or  in  classes  in  which  it  never  takes  place." 
We  have  "  no  reason  to  think  that  morals  have  been 
lowered  in  England  by  divorce.  We  have  in  our  pres- 
ent action  an  open  flame  in  place  of  a  smouldering  fire. 
Ultimate  safety  is  as  easily  achieved  under  existing  as 
under  previous  conditions."  1 

The  Spectator  says  :  "  The  Union  repudiates  and  puts 
down  polygamy,  but  two-thirds  of  its  component  States 
maintain  a  system  of  divorce  which  legalizes  polygamy 
under  another  name."  2  This  statement  is  made  in  igno- 
rance of  the  real  causes  at  work.  The  relation  of  the 
sexes  is  certainly  not  more  faulty  in  America  than  in 
England.  We  believe  that  it  is  somewhat  less  faulty. 
Broken  bonds  are  allowed  simply  to  declare  themselves 
more  freely  here  than  there. 

A  cause  of  divorce  as  immediate  and  potent  as  that 
of  altered  and  reduced  faiths  is  the  urgent  assertion  of 
larger  liberty  and  more  comprehensive  rights  on  the 
part  of  women.  This  is  perhaps  the  most  important  of 
the  influences  which  are  working  relaxation  in  marriage 
ties.  Divorce  has  been  less  frequent  in  the  South  than 
in  the  North  and  the  West.  Religious  beliefs  and  con- 
ventional sentiments  have  retained  a  more  inflexible 
form  in  the  Southern  than  in  the  Northern  States. 
When  the  restraints  of  the  household  are  those  of  cus- 
tom rather  than  those  of  reason,  when  its  purity  is 
formal  rather  than  real,  we  shall  find  divorce  more 
frequently  sought  by  men  than  by  women,  and  the 
alleged    cause   of  divorces    to  be  more  often  adultery. 

1  "  History  of  the  Eighteenth  Century  in  England,"  vol.  vi.  p.  269. 

2  March  7,  1891. 


62  CUSTOMS. 

If  we  contrast  two  such  States  as  Georgia  and  Illinois, 
we  discover  plain  indications  that  the  apparently  greater 
strength  of  the  household  in  the  former  State  than  in 
the  latter  is  due  to  evils  pushed  into  the  background, 
rather  than  to  the  absence  of  evils. 

Thus  in  the  twenty  years  of  which  mention  has  been 
made,  the  whole  number  of  divorces  for  adultery  in 
Georgia  were  1,143,  of  which  848  were  granted  to  men 
and  295  to  women.  These  returns  show  at  once  that 
the  wrongs  of  women  in  this  direction  had  been  simply 
ignored ;  that  they  had  not  dared  or  not  cared  to  assert 
them.  The  supposition  that  women  had  actually  given 
more  offence,  or  even  equal  offence,  with  men,  is  pre- 
posterous. 

If  we  turn  to  Illinois,  we  find  that  in  the  same  period 
7,268  divorces  were  granted  on  the  plea  of  adultery,  but 
that  3,530  of  them  had  been  conceded  to  women.  Evi- 
dently this  changed  ratio  discloses  a  growing  inclination 
on  the  part  of  women  to  assert  their  rights  —  to  claim 
for  themselves  the  protection  of  law.  The  number  of 
divorces  for  adultery  in  Illinois,  with  a  population  about 
double  that  of  Georgia,  is  more  than  six  times  greater. 
Here  again  we  may  be  sure  that  the  divorce  laws  of 
Illinois  did  not  primarily  occasion  this  adultery,  but 
were  the  means  of  bringing  it  to  light. 

The  character  of  this  tendency  is  also  seen  in  the 
great  increase  of  those  secondary  grounds  of  divorce, 
which  women  are  chiefly  inclined  to  plead,  such  as 
cruelty,  desertion,  drunkenness.  The  total  divorces  in 
Georgia  were  3,959;  1,143  were  given  on  the  ground 
of  adultery,  and  2,816  for  other  causes.  In  Illinois, 
36,072   divorces   were   conceded ;    7,266    for    adultery, 


DIVORCE.  63 

28,806  for  other  reasons.  Thus  in  the  Southern  State 
three-tenths  of  the  entire  number  were  granted  for  adul- 
tery, and  in  the  Northern  State  two-tenths  only.  In 
this  multiplication  of  the  causes  of  divorce,  we  have, 
it  is  true,  the  very  evil  complained  of,  but  we  have 
also  a  fact  by  no  means  so  discouraging  —  a  disposition 
to  insist  on  the  peace  and  prosperity  of  the  household 
as  the  condition  of  its  permanence.  The  spiritual  life 
is  not  smothered  up  under  its  physical  terms. 

That  this  feeling,  and  not  simply  license,  is  an  im- 
portant reason  in  the  growth  of  divorce  is  disclosed  in 
the  relatively  greater  number  of  women  seeking  separa- 
tion as  compared  with  men.  The  disasters  of  divorce 
rest  most  immediately  and  most  heavily  on  women. 
License  is  far  more  habitual  with  men  than  with  women. 
If,  then,  the  increase  of  divorce  arises  from  the  claims  of 
women  rather  than  from  those  of  men,  this  increase  is  not 
primarily  one  of  lust,  but  comes  in  part,  at  least,  from 
a  demand  for  more  equal  and  righteous  terms  of  life. 
Women  face  a  great  evil  in  behalf  of  a  great  claim. 

In  Georgia  the  divorces  granted  to  men  and  women 
respectively  were  1,907  and  2,052  ;  in  Illinois  they  were 
11,240  and  24,832.  That  is,  the  claims  of  women  as 
compared  with  those  of  men  have  increased  a  hundred 
per  cent.  Nothing  can  be  more  certain  than  that  this 
percentage  stands  for  purity  and  not  for  impurity. 
About  twenty  per  cent  of  divorces  are  conceded  be- 
cause of  intemperance,  a  fact  much  in  point  as  indi- 
cating the  claims  of  women  in  the  household  —  their 
unwillingness  to  allow  even  the  most  sacred  law  to  be 
used  as  a  dead  weight  to  crush  down  life. 

We    do   not  wish   to  imply  that  there  are  not  very 


64  CUSTOMS. 

grave  evils  in  these  claims  for  divorce,  but  that  they 
are,  in  part,  evils  incident  to  a  tendency  essentially 
sound  and  socially  corrective.  All  progress  involves 
some  mischief.  Our  wisdom  becomes  the  retention  of 
the  one  and  the  elimination  of  the  other. 

One  cause  of  the  broken  household  is  that  liberty 
among  men  is  not  easily  separable  from  license.  Li- 
cense follows  on  with  liberty  to  confound  and  corrupt 
it.  Some  have  thought  of  the  marriage  relation,  owing 
so  much  of  its  sanctity  to  religion,  as  a  kind  of  doc- 
trine, and  possibly  as  a  superstition.  In  canvassing 
our  spiritual  convictions  this  relation  also  is  subjected 
to  destructive  criticism,  and  that  only  saved  in  it  which 
is  left  as  the  last  product  of  speculation.  The  question 
has  thus  been  raised,  by  those  who  have  prided  them- 
selves on  breaking  with  the  conventional  trammels  of 
thought,  whether  marriage,  being  a  contract,  comes 
wholly  under  the  law  of  contracts,  and  may  be  made 
for  a  limited  period.1 

There  is  in  this  view  an  entire  failure  to  understand 
the  true  force  of  human  experience  as  associated  with 
the  household.  The  household,  in  its  purity  and  its  per- 
manence, may  be  said  to  be  the  primary  inductive  prin- 
ciple in  society,  which  rests  back  on  the  entire  progress 
of  the  race.  Religion  has  seen  this  relation  and  helped 
it  forward  ;  it  has  not  established  it.  It  was  established 
when  men  were  made.  The  family  does  not,  by  any 
logical  connection  of  ideas,  share  the  fortunes  of  specu- 
lative, spiritual  truth.  However  these  convictions  may 
shape  themselves,  the  ripened  family  remains  the  one 

1  Publications  of  the  National  Divorce  Reform  League,  No.  4, 
Samuel  W.  Dike. 


DIVORCE.  65 

wholesome  fruit  of  our  mundane  experience.  Its  for- 
tunes are  so  interlocked  with  the  fortunes  of  faith,  be- 
cause both  family  and  faith  stand  for  the  vital  processes 
of  our  lives.  Life  cannot  be  weakened  without  weaken- 
ing the  flow  of  the  affections  in  all  relations,  near  and 
remote.  Discussions  of  this  loose  character,  turning  on 
free  love,  may  be  symptomatic  of  changes  too  rapid  to  be 
wholly  safe  ;  but  they  will,  in  the  end,  rather  strengthen 
than  weaken  that  instinctive  tendency  by  which  we 
shelter  ourselves  behind  the  familiar  organic  forms  of 
the  world.  Any  social  science  that  fails  to  recognize  the 
true  value  of  these  germs  of  life  which,  with  their  pre- 
cious powers,  are  the  ripe  seeds  of  all  previous  time, 
need  hardly  be  reckoned  with  as  a  serious  force  in  our 
present  unfolding. 

The  lavish  expenditure  which  is  so  marked  a  feature 
of  our  present  social  state,  affects  marriage  unfavorably. 
Marriage  is  deferred ;  and  when  it  is  accepted,  the 
vexations  which  attend  on  straitened  means  with  those 
subject  to  exacting  claims,  tend  to  make  harmony  and 
contentment  difficult  to  secure.  Divorce  seems  to  follow 
usually  as  the  result  of  a  slow  alienation  which  arises 
from  an  inability  to  overcome  the  hourly  friction  of 
lives  that  but  partially  conform  to  each  other.  Late 
marriage,  and  marriage  under  the  stress  of  expenditure 
that  presses  hard  on  the  means  of  support,  tend  obviously 
to  increase  those  occasions  of  discontent  which  issue  in 
estranged  feelings  and  broken  vows.  In  the  report  re- 
ferred to,  the  average  period  of  marriages  which  have 
led  to  divorce  is  given  as  9.17  years.  This  long  period 
shows  that  divorce  is  not,  in  the  majority  of  cases,  the 
result  of  sudden  freaks,  violent  passions,  or  ungoverned 


66  CUSTOMS. 

lusts,  but  of  a  failure  to  win  permanently  the  conditions 
of  an  enjoyable  life.  The  household  has  not  coalesced 
under  the  activity  and  growing  interests  of  the  household. 
The  moral  forces  have  been  weakened  and  worn  away  by 
the  perplexities  and  vexations  of  the  mere  process  of 
living.  The  want  of  wholesome  and  proportionate  aims 
has  brought  weariness  to  all  relations. 

This  is  also  shown  by  the  growing  strength  of  divi- 
sive forces  in  the  wealthy  classes  as  contrasted  with 
the  poorer  classes.  The  restlessness  of  society  is  in- 
creased rather  than  diminished  as  it  comes  under  less 
exacting  and  more  luxurious  social  sentiment.  The 
theatres  of  East  London,  frequented  by  the  working- 
classes  or  those  closely  affiliated  with  them,  less  readily 
admit  any  license  or  injurious  innuendo  than  do  the 
theatres  of  West  London,  sustained  by  those  who  pos- 
sess wealth  and  social  position.  There  is  here  to  be 
seen  the  influence  of  luxury,  so  dissolving  to  moral 
ties.  But  luxury  is  only  one  phase  of  the  temper 
which  gives  supreme  potency  to  the  external  conditions 
of  life.  The  domestic  life  of  the  bourgeois  in  France 
rests  on  a  sensibly  firmer  and  better  basis  than  that  of 
those  thought  to  be  in  advance  of  them.  In  the  degree 
in  which  our  conjoint  life  is  developed  early  and  freely 
from  its  own  primitive  centres  does  it  seem  to  be  vig- 
orous and  wholesome.  Club-life  and  hotel-life,  almost 
wholly  confined  to  those  who  are  swept  strongly  in  by 
the  social  current,  are  often  very  much  at  war  with  the 
quiet,  sweet  domesticity  of  the  household. 

The  industrial  gains  of  women,  in  so  many  ways  ad- 
vantageous, make  them  more  independent  of  marriage, 
less  inclined  to  accept  it  under  undesirable  forms,  and 


DIVORCE.  67 

less  willing  to  endure  the  hopeless  evils  that  may  come 
with  it.  An  economic  development,  however  gainful 
in  itself,  that  outstrips  the  moral  forces  that  should 
work  with  it,  is  sure  to  bring  some  new  inconvenience. 
Our  industrial  life,  awakening  strong  ambitions,  giving 
occasion  to  deep  divisions,  calling  out  inferior  motives, 
and  diverting  the  eye  from  the  chief  excellences  of 
manhood,  throws  unusual  strain  on  the  household,  the 
source  of  our  better  inspirations.  We  can  reach  the 
harmony  of  a  higher  development  only  by  restoring  har- 
mony to  this  lower  development.  In  our  great  cities, 
where  the  economic  currents  are  all-embracing  and  rapid, 
they  easily  sweep  in  and  tear  asunder  the  household. 

Laxity  of  law,  in  some  of  our  States,  has  been  re- 
garded as  an  important  cause  of  the  increase  of  divorce. 
These  lax  laws  seem  to  be  effects  rather  than  causes. 
The  report  of  C.  D.  Wright  shows  that  eighty  per  cent 
of  those  divorced  are  divorced  in  the  State  in  which  the 
marriage  took  place.  If  we  consider  the  changeable 
character  of  our  population,  the  fraction  of  persons  who 
have  sought  a  State  to  avail  themselves  of  its  lax  laws 
will  be  seen  to  be  very  small.  Though  loose  laws  are  a 
symptom  of  the  disease,  they  are  but  a  very  secondary 
part  of  the  disease  itself. 

Nor  is  the  disease  so  much  a  real  weakening  of  or- 
ganic forces  as  it  is  the  embarrassment  of  these  forces 
by  new  conditions,  some  of  them  desirable,  some  of  a 
mingled  character,  and  some  undesirable,  though  we 
may  trust  transient.  On  the  whole,  the  frequency  of 
divorce  is  simply  a  call  on  society  to  readjust  itself  to 
fresh  and  larger  terms  of  life. 

§  13.    This  fact,  which  may  quiet  our  alarm,  should 


68  CUSTOMS. 

by  no  means  lead  us  to  overlook  the  mischiefs  which  are 
arising  from  present  maladjustments,  nor  to  abate  our 
efforts  to  remove  them.  Any  real  weakness  in  the 
marriage  relation  is  an  incipient  decadence  of  all  social 
ties.  Children  lose  nurture,  lose  social  position,  come 
under  a  cold  conventional  sentiment;  and  go  out  into 
the  community  as  waifs  —  leaves  that  have  fallen  from 
a  withered  tree.  Women  suffer  at  once  and  severely  in 
character  and  in  position.  They  are  unseated  from  the 
true  throne  of  spiritual  authority.  The  purity  and 
loving  power  of  motherhood,  its  ability  to  overcome  evil 
with  good,  to  vanquish  sin  by  bearing  its  brunt,  are 
gone.  The  wife  and  mother,  losing  her  invincible  grip 
on  the  eternal  order  of  the  world,  is  thrust  out  to  battle 
in  a  confused  way  with  moral  forces  helplessly  com- 
mingled, obscure,  and  malignant.  The  very  best  attain- 
able results  are  only  partially  redemptive,  —  the  casting 
of  a  cloak  over  evils  which  cannot  be  forgotten,  —  and 
the  worst  are  altogether  devilish. 

Though  the  retribution  of  license  comes  less  directly, 
and  more  leniently,  to  men  in  their  social  relations,  it 
comes  to  them  with  even  more  severity  than  to  women 
in  its  subversion  of  all  pure,  generous,  and  just  impulses 
in  the  soul  itself,  in  its  levelling  of  the  spiritual  life  to 
the  very  ground.  They  slip  off  the  basis  of  purified 
affections,  and  are  driven  hither  and  thither  by  restless, 
insatiable  impulses  which  they  can  neither  accept  nor 
cast  off.  The  slow  growth  of  centuries  has  fenced  in 
the  household  from  the  hoofs  of  unclean  beasts,  not  as 
creating  something,  but  as  sheltering  the  only  truly 
creative  process  in  this  human  world  of  ours.  Religion 
has  cast  over  the  household  its  holiest  sentiments,  as 


REMEDIES.  69 

finding  therein  the  most  significant  interpretation  of 
the   divine   mind. 

The  reduction  of  the  moral  and  spiritual  sense,  in- 
cident to  every  action  and  every  method  which  come 
under  the  censure  of  impurity,  is  of  the  most  fatal  char- 
acter. The  soul  cannot  be  entirely  wholesome  and 
sound  in  any  portion  of  its  life  till  it  rests,  in  peaceful 
poise,  at  the  very  centre  of  its  being,  on  those  ties  of 
kinship  with  which  all  other  ties  are  interwoven.  The 
terrible  cost,  the  unspeakable  injustice  toward  women, 
under  which  this  sanctity  of  the  home  has  been  won, 
should  make  us  most  cautious  in  parting  with  any  por- 
tion of  our  gains  —  gains  which  we  may  purify  and 
complete,  but  cannot  diminish  without  being  compelled 
to  purchase  them  again  at  an  enhanced  price. 

A  consideration  of  the  remedies  for  the  growingly 
lax  relation  of  marriage  throws  us  back  at  once  on  the 
intrinsic  and  the  formal  causes  which  are  producing 
this  result.  Moral  and  religious  motives,  in  shifting 
their  grounds,  lose  for  the  moment  something  of  their 
force.  This  inevitable  tendency  we  must  recognize  and 
resist.  Our  freedom  should  lead  us  to  understand  more 
profoundly  and  handle  more  vigorously  the  spiritual 
conditions  under  which  we  are  at  work.  As  immutable 
in  temper  as  is  the  spiritual  universe,  so  immutable  are 
these  its  primary  truths.  We  need  to  deepen  life,  that 
we  may  deepen  the  hold  of  life  upon  us. 

Changing  economic  and  social  conditions  are  demand- 
ing a  new,  freer,  and  better  rendering  of  the  household. 
The  fact  that  household  relations  need  to  be  reinter- 
preted may,  for  a  moment,  in  our  hasty  thought,  dis- 
parage them  for  us.     On  this  reinterpretation  we  should 


70  CUSTOMS. 

enter  with  a  clear  sense  of  the  worth  of  that  with 
which  we  are  dealing,  and  also  of  the  inestimable  value 
and  vitality  of  the  fresh,  germinant  impulses  which  are 
being  brought  to  the  home.  Once  let  higher  inspira- 
tions enter  the  relation  between  husband  and  wife,  and 
the  new  type  will  surpass  the  old  type  in  strength  as  in 
all  worthy  quality.  Generous  and  just  social  changes 
must  go  forward,  and  must  go  forward  together,  as  the 
condition  of  renewed  functional  life  in  each  social  organ. 
We  may  well  rejoice  that  the  causes  of  the  existing 
evil  attend  on  an  organic  process,  rather  than  on  a 
diseased  one,  and  that  we  have  only  to  hasten  forward 
reconstruction. 

There  are,  however,  formal  as  well  as  intrinsic  forces 
at  work,  and  we  must  treat  these  according  to  their 
nature.  In  doing  this  we  are  brought  to  the  relation 
of  civil  law  and  sound  morality.  Many  other  social 
questions  cast  us  upon  this  same  inquiry.  Says  Leslie 
Stephen,  in  his  work  on  Ethics,  "  Chastity  and  fidelity 
are  not  to  be  made  by  any  law."  '  This  assertion,  as 
also  many  a  kindred  dogma,  is  one  whose  truth  seems 
expressly  designed  to  prepare  the  way  for  error.  Wise 
laws  express  moral  sentiments  in  their  most  effective 
forms.  With  the  mass  of  men  there  is  no  other  fully 
effective  form.  Their  standard  of  morality,  their  sense 
of  what  may  fittingly  be,  is  the  law  of  the  land.  Those 
also  who  are  vicious  in  their  tendencies  are  restrained 
in  part  by  the  law ;  and  when  unrestrained  come  under 
the  censure  of  the  law,  and  so  do  not  reduce  by  their 
action  the  common  standard  of  right  to  the  degree  they 
otherwise  would. 

i  Page  133. 


REMEDIES.  71 

The  process  by  which  sound  law  is  secured  and  en- 
forced is  a  most  wholesome  moral  one.  Moral  vigor 
cannot  show  itself,  nor  increase  itself,  otherwise  than 
by  aiming  at  the  restraints  of  law,  when  these  restraints 
are  applicable.  Eight  form  and  right  substance  are  ul- 
timately inseparable  in  action.  The  one  cannot  exist 
long  without  the  other.  Any  indolent  disparagement, 
therefore,  of  appropriate  law  in  favor  of  moral  force 
is  alike  against  the  substance  and  the  form  of  virtue. 
Fit  and  uniform  laws  would  be  with  us  the  most  direct 
and  adequate  expression  of  sound  and  pervasive  senti- 
ment. 

Law  in  the  past  has  brought  two  somewhat  distinct 
forms  of  protection  to  the  household.  The  one  has  lain 
in  defining  and  enforcing  rights,  as  between  husband 
and  wife,  in  the  household ;  the  other  in  maintaining 
the  existence  of  the  household, — the  force  of  the  obli- 
gations on  which  it  rests.  The  duties  of  the  husband 
and  of  the  wife  in  reference  to  each  other  are  so  pre- 
eminently personal  and  moral,  repose  on  such  a  basis 
of  equality  and  liberty,  that  the  law  cannot  well  inter- 
vene. Its  intervention  has  looked  toward  the  peace 
secured  by  power,  rather  than  by  the  reconciliation  of 
rights.  The  law  may  provide  for  the  safety  of  the 
person  and  define  respectively  the  claims  which  arise 
from  holding  property  in  common;  but  it  can  do  noth- 
ing, or  next  to  nothing,  in  protecting  within  itself  the 
unity  of  the  household.  Separation,  undesirable  as  it 
may  be,  is  not  more  undesirable  than  coerced  cohab- 
itation. There  is  neither  a  social  nor  a  civil  gain  in 
perpetuating  what  Browning  has  termed  "  Dog-snap  and 
cat-claw,   curse   and   counter-blast."     The    moral   prob- 


72  customs. 

lem  of  household  economy  must,  from  the  necessity  of 
the  case,  be  left  to  the  moral  forces  involved  in  it.  To 
perpetuate  the  household  simply  as  a  means  of  tyranny 
to  one  of  its  members  looks  toward  no  blessing  what- 
ever. 

If  the  husband  and  wife  have  both  liberty,  and  ex- 
actly the  same  liberty,  the  distinction  between  limited 
divorce  and  divorce  may  well  disappear.  Separation  is 
thus  open  to  either  at  any  time.  Divorce,  when  it  is 
granted,  wholly  dissolves  the  contract,  and  for  both 
alike.  The  law  deals  directly  and  singly  with  the  con- 
tract it  has  confirmed  and  with  the  conditions  which 
dissolve  it.  The  legal  and  the  moral  relations  are 
thus  kept  apart,  and  each  does  its  work  the  more  per- 
fectly. 

Marriage,  as  a  contract  which  involves  wide-reaching 
social  and  civic  effects,  may  well  come  under  the  severe 
scrutiny  of  the  law.  These  effects,  rather  than  individ- 
ual pleasure,  must  define  the  terms  on  which  the  con- 
tract can  be  dissolved.  Yet  these  terms  are  to  be  settled 
on  distinctly  social  and  civil  grounds,  not  on  sentimental 
nor  moral  nor  religious  ones.  These  latter  reasons  will 
always  rise  higher,  sink  deeper,  and  have  a  wider  force, 
than  those  which  govern  the  state.  A  law  that  is  capa- 
ble of  enforcement,  that  gives  rough  yet  adequate  pro- 
tection to  social  interests,  that  is  practical  by  including 
in  its  aims  the  best  possibilities  of  time,  place,  and 
people,  that  interposes  a  real  obstacle  to  license,  that 
compels  caution  in  the  formation  of  marriage  and  con- 
fines as  closely  as  may  be  the  evils  of  broken  marriage 
vows  to  those  who  have  violated  them,  is  all  that  the 
state  can  undertake  to  provide.     Its  office  is  to  shelter, 


RELATIONS    OF  CLASSES.  73 

as  best  it  can,  the  leading  interests  entrusted  to  its  pro- 
tection. It  cannot  offer  a  perfect  ideal,  nor  prevent  a 
waste  of  well-being  on  the  part  of  those  who  have  looked 
to  their  own  interest  too  negligently  in  the  ties  they 
have  formed. 

In  doing  this  there  will  inevitably  be  a  division  of 
sentiment  as  to  what  violation  of  marital  duties  may  be 
justly  pleaded  as  a  ground  of  divorce.  Adultery,  felony, 
habitual  drunkenness,  desertion,  seem  so  plain  a  disso- 
lution of  marriage  as  to  justify  the  removal  of  its 
obligations.  Beyond  this  we  go  with  difficulty,  and  go 
in  safety  only  in  clear  recognition  of  the  particular 
social  state  with  which  we  are  dealing. 

§  14.  The  second  division  of  social  customs  is  made 
up  of  those  which  define  the  relations  of  classes  to  each 
other.  These  customs  are  still  of  great  moment,  though 
they  pertain,  in  full  force,  to  less  developed  rather  than 
to  more  developed  periods.  The  distinction  of  classes 
rests  on  diversity  of  physical  and  intellectual  endow- 
ments, on  race,  on  conquest,  and  on  wealth.  The  differ- 
ences incident  to  this  variety  of  powers  and  relations, 
when  they  are  defined  and  sustained  by  customs,  consti- 
tute classes.  These  customs  do  not  simply  support  the 
differences  which  give  rise  to  them ;  they  tend  to  set 
them  definite  limits,  and  so  far  to  restrain  them.  If 
the  custom  springs  out  of  tyranny,  it  in  turn  restricts 
tyranny.  Relations  bad  in  themselves  are  made  bear- 
able by  customs  which  define  and  soften  them.  Con- 
duct, on  either  side,  comes  under  control  and  settles 
down  into  order.  Under  these  determinate  terms,  soci- 
ety takes  up  its  eternal  problem  how  to  sustain  existing 
lines  of  organic  force  and  how,  further  on,  oftentimes 


74  CUSTOMS. 

much  further  on,  to  reach  a  more  personal  and  moral 
basis.  Customs  which  order  the  relations  of  classes  to 
each  other,  deeply  penetrating  daily  life,  become,  on  the 
one  hand,  a  new  starting-point  of  movement,  and,  on 
the  other  hand,  the  most  powerful  barrier  to  progress. 

In  countries  in  which  they  exist  extensively,  as  in 
India,  society  is  completely  fettered  by  them.  Every 
possible  movement  is  anticipated  and  thwarted.  Such 
customs,  the  results  of  years  of  violence,  can  hardly  be 
broken  down  otherwise  than  by  violence.  The  official 
census  of  India  gives  by  name  19,044  castes  and  subdi- 
visions of  castes,  limiting  social  intercourse  in  every 
conceivable  way.  Caste  thus  becomes  at  once  the  full 
expression  and  complete  arrest  of  the  organic  force. 

The  Feudal  System  gave  rise  to  customs  in  a  much 
simpler  and  more  restricted  form,  which  it  has,  none 
the  less,  taken  many  centuries  to  break  down. 

§  15.  What  we  term  the  negro  problem  is  one  of 
class  customs,  resting  on  slavery  and  on  race-prejudice. 
The  difficulty  lies  in  harmonizing  wide  social  differences 
with  civic  equality ;  it  lies  in  softening  down  the  social 
customs  which  spring  up  along  a  line  of  such  deep  divis- 
ion. Social  customs  are  ready  to  anticipate  and  de- 
stroy civil  liberty.  The  trouble  is  one  of  sentiments  — 
sentiments  which  have  hitherto  been  at  liberty  to  define 
and  defend  themselves  by  civic  institutions,  but  have 
now  lost  their  familiar  method  of  expression.  This 
new  embarrassment  can  be  overcome  only  by  a  thorough 
recognition  of  the  authority  of  rights  in  civil  relations, 
and  of  sentiments  in  more  personal  social  relations. 
If  we  cheerfully  accept  justice  in  the  first  connection, 
we  shall  meet  with  but  little  difficulty  from  the  freedom 


NEGRO    PROBLEM.  75 

of  feeling  in  the  second  connection.  It  has  been  a  long, 
hard  struggle  to  separate  civil  and  religions  rights  from 
each  other,  giving  each  its  own  field.  It  is  a  hard 
struggle  to  sever  inveterate  social  sentiments  from  the 
primary  relations  of  men  to  each  other  in  the  state. 
Both  these  divisions  are,  in  a  measure,  arbitrary  and 
undesirable.  They  prevent  the  most  complete  organiza- 
tion of  society  ;  but  they  are  far  better  than  that  con- 
fusion of  social  and  civil  rights,  of  personal  and  collec- 
tive liberty,  which  follows  at  once  from  commingling 
religious  and  civic,  or  social  and  civic  claims. 

If  civil  rights  are  freely  yielded  to  the  blacks  with  a 
liberal  interpretation  ;  if  justice  is  allowed  its  entire 
claim  in  public  relations ;  if  social  connections  are  left 
to  shape  themselves  under  social  sentiments,  dignity 
and  courtesy  holding  sway,  the  negro  problem  is  re- 
duced at  once  to  its  lowest  terms,  and  will  ultimately 
pass  out  of  sight.  The  personal  relations  incident  to 
liberty  are  neither  so  intimate  nor  so  embarrassing  as 
those  which  attended  on  slavery. 

The  great  obstacle  to  immediate  improvement  is  that 
intelligence  and  virtue  have  lost,  in  part,  the  public 
influence  which  properly  falls  to  them.  The  mutual 
wrongs  of  reconstruction  and  the  association  of  influ- 
ential citizens  with  injustice  have  robbed  them  of  their 
prestige.  Let  men  of  all  classes  be  secure  of  justice, 
and  they  will  make  shift  to  bear  the  foibles  of  feeling 
which  they  themselves  more  or  less  share.  Kindly  and 
persuasive  influences  have  lost  force  because  of  the  vio- 
lent rupture  of  civil  relations.  Taken  all  in  all,  no  race 
is  more  concessive  to  real  superiority  than  the  negro 
race.     The  civic  conditions  of  the  South  have,   by  the 


76  CUSTOMS. 

force  of  circumstances,  been  thrown  far  in  advance  of 
their  social  ones,  and  the  victory  lies  not  in  retreat, 
but  in  softening  social  asperities  till  they  shall  cease 
to  embarrass  the  state.  The  economic  and  the  civic 
machinery  might  be  made  slowly  and  painfully  to  re- 
volve, if  good  citizens  would  not  constantly  cast  into 
them  sand  and  gravel.  No  new  thing,  only  an  extreme 
thing,  has  happened  to  the  South.  Its  growing  indus- 
trial strength,  if  it  be  tempered  with  justice,  will  be  a 
powerful  assimilating  and  corrective  force. 

§  16.  A  third  class  of  social  customs  are  manners. 
Manners  fall  into  two  divisions :  special  or  ceremonial 
manners,  general  or  social  manners.  Ceremonies  lie 
between  classes  on  special  occasions.  Manners  lie 
between  persons  in  ordinary  intercourse.  Ceremonies, 
uniting  themselves  to  the  customs  which  divide  men, 
are  important  or  unimportant  according  to  the  depths 
of  these  divisions. 

Early  and  tyrannical  governments  sustain  themselves 
in  connection  with  ceremonies,  and  have  been  termed  cer- 
emonial governments.  A  disregard  of  prescribed  forms 
might  become  a  capital  offence,  as  we  see  in  the  story 
of  Esther. 

Ceremonies  in  our  time  gather  almost  exclusively 
about  courts  and  state  pageants,  and  justify  themselves 
to  the  public  mind,  partly  by  the  definite  order  which 
they  secure,  and  partly  by  the  glamour  which  still 
clings  to  them  for  the  most  of  men.  Jefferson,  in  his 
extreme  democratic  sentiment,  strove,  as  President  of 
the  United  States,  to  abolish  all  ceremony,  all  rules  of 
precedence.  But  the  sense  of  social  differences  was  still 
so  much  stronger  than  that  of  intrinsic  worth,  that  the 


MANNERS.  77 

result  was  to  most  men  ridiculous  rather  than  dignified' 
With  an  increasing  diversity  in  the  distribution  of 
wealth,  ceremonial  manners  creep  in  as  certainly  as 
lichens  and  moss  cover  the  moist  rock. 

Manners  are  a  subdued,  and  more  or  less  fantastic, 
code  of  morals.  With  many  they  have  a  wider  appli- 
cation and  more  force  than  do  morals.  They  embody 
themselves  in  voluminous  and  growing  codes  of  etiquette. 
They  amplify  rules,  frequently  just,  but  often  arbitrary 
and  frivolous.  They  put  in  place  of  each  man's  sense  of 
fitness  and  good-will  conventional  methods  whose  neglect 
is  a  social  offence.  It  is  true  here  as  elsewhere  that  one 
cannot  serve  two  masters.  A  vigorous  moral  sense  will 
frequently  break  through  the  laws  of  etiquette  as  mere 
social  cobwebs ;  and  those  who  convert  their  attenuated 
threads  into  tenacious  fibre  will  frequently  forget  the 
weightier  matters  of  the  moral  law. 

Manners  are  chiefly  entrusted  to  women  for  elabora- 
tion and  enforcement.  This  arises  from  a  variety  of 
reasons  in  the  organization  of  society.  Women  have 
the  keener,  more  cultivated  sense  of  propriety,  and  have 
more  frequent  occasion  to  appeal  to  it  for  protection. 
They  have  been  and  still  are  much  restrained  in  the 
circle  of  their  activity.  They  inevitably  struggle,  there- 
fore, to  make  the  most  of  what  falls  to  them.  They  are 
the  ruling  powers  in  the  household,  and  the  household 
In  its  inclusions  and  exclusions  is  the  anthoritative  test 
of  social  position.  From  this  centre  the  distinctions 
attendant  on  manners  go  forth,  and  to  it  they  return. 
The  wider  relations  and  interests  of  business  do  not 
allow  men  to  lay  stress  on  divisive  and  irritating  punc- 
tilio.    The  careful  confinement  of  etiquette  to  interior 


78  CUSTOMS. 

social  ties,  and  its  relaxation  in  external  ones,  has  a 
reason  in  the  fitness  of  things  ;  yet  the  results,  as  in  most 
cases,  are  constantly  reaching  beyond  the  reasons,  and 
affecting  unfavorably  the  character  of  those  who  are  as- 
siduously building  up  the  minor  proprieties  of  life.  A 
wider  range  of  motives  would  lead  to  a  decisive  im- 
provement of  manners  themselves,  and  to  still  greater 
gains  in  the  mental  force  of  those  who  direct  them. 

The  purposes  subserved  by  manners  and  the  dangers 
incident  to  them  are  far  too  important  to  allow  a  wise 
man  to  despise  them.  When  there  are  marked  social 
divisions  in  society,  good  manners  tend  both  to  sustain 
and  to  soften  them.  We  adapt  ourselves  to  the  in- 
evitable, and  by  so  doing  make  it  the  more  bearable. 
Good  manners  are  not  unlike  the  speedy  growths  with 
which  nature  soon  hides  the  ravages  of  fire  and  flood. 

Manners  restrain  rudeness,  coarseness,  and  indecency. 
Their  efficiency  as  a  social  police  is  astonishing.  They 
do  without  observation  by  obscure  motives  more  in 
many  directions  than  can  be  accomplished  by  civil  or 
by  ethical  law. 

They  give  the  most  fit  expression  to  good-will,  and  so 
serve  to  increase  it.  The  best  form  imparts  to  the  un- 
derlying impulse  the  fullest  force.  They  arise  also  in 
gratification  of  an  artistic  tendency.  Courtesy  becomes 
a  fine  art,  and,  taken  with  sound  conduct,  is  the  most 
beautiful  expression  of  human  life.  Kindly  manners, 
systematically  enforced,  as  with  the  Japanese,  are 
closely  allied  with  morals,  even  though  they  may  at 
times  fall  signally  short  of  them. 

Good  manners  so  relieve  the  friction  of  intercourse, 
and  remove  so  many  secondary  obstacles  to  success,  that 


AMUSEMENTS.  79 

they  often  become  a  marked  economy  of  one's  resources, 
and,  without  taking  the  place  of  higher  acquisitions,  pre- 
pare the  way  for  them. 

Manners,  as  prescribing  the  standards  of  living,  the 
forms  and  degrees  of  expenditure  which  define  classes, 
are  powerful  economic  forces.  Men  resist  with  their 
utmost  strength  a  reduction  in  the  form  of  living  which 
sinks  them  to  a  lower  class,  and  are  especially  stimu- 
lated by  outlays  which  raise  them  in  rank.  "What  seem 
to  be  the  accidents  of  life  are  frequently  among  its  most 
potent  forces. 

Manners  command  attention  because  of  the  large 
amount  of  action  affected  by  them.  To  most  persons 
they  are  a  more  omnipresent  law  than  morality.  They 
also  call  for  the  more  scrutiny  as  they  so  easily  become 
fantastic  and  tyrannical.  This  is  especially  seen  in  con- 
nection with  fashions,  which  are  closely  associated  with 
manners,  and  are  enforced  by  the  same  authority. 

Manners  may  readily  oppose  themselves  to  our  higher 
spiritual  impulses,  and  may  do  it  in  so  subtile  a  way 
that  we  shall  hardly  be  aware  of  it.  Church  decorations 
and  Easter  flowers,  in  the  very  presence  of  unrelieved 
human  want  are  a  misrendering  of  the  mind  of  Christ. 

§  17.  Amusements  offer  a  problem  closely  associated 
with  manners.  Like  manners,  they  indicate  the  tone  of 
our  lives,  and,  in  much  the  same  way,  modify  that  tone. 
Amusements  are  popular  and  professional ;  those  which 
the  people  provide  for  themselves,  and  those  which  are 
provided  for  them.  The  first,  as  more  universal  and 
spontaneous,  and  standing  in  closer  connection  with  the 
lives  of  those  who  enter  into  them,  are,  of  the  two,  the 
more  important. 


80  CUSTOMS 

It  belongs  to  -fitting  amusements  to  give  pleasure,  to 
afford  relaxation,  to  promote  physical  health,  to  be  free 
from  excess,  and  not  to  call  out  reckless,  lascivious,  or 
brutal  impulses.  It  is  very  difficult  to  separate  excess 
from  pleasure.  A  large  share  of  the  censure  which, 
at  different  periods,  has  come  to  popular  amusements, 
has  found  its  justifying  reason,  not  in  any  necessary  or 
intrinsic  evil,  but  in  the  excess  which  has  overtaken 
them.  When  we  revive  a  discarded  popular  pleasure 
we  are  often  able  to  do  it  safely  because  of  the  very 
condemnation  of  it  by  those  whose  opinions  we  are 
ready  to  ridicule.  We  avail  ourselves  of  the  balance 
of  life  which  they  have  restored. 

A  passionate  and  even  a  brutal  impulse  are  very  easily 
associated  with  amusements.  This  passion  is  mischiev- 
ous when  it  attaches  to  a  narrow,  professional  circle, 
as  in  gladiatorial  shows,  bull-fights,  and  prize-fights ; 
and  quite  as  mischievous  when  it  blunts  the  sensi- 
bilities of  large  classes  to  any  of  the  finer  appeals  of 
human  sympathy,  as  in  fox-hunting  and  foot-ball.  If 
a  young  man  cannot  afford  the  strain  and  risk  of  foot- 
ball, then  no  thoroughly  appreciative  person  can  afford 
to  see  him  subject  himself  to  these  unnecessary  de- 
mands. A  game  which  imposes  excessive  exertion  and 
an  instant  acceptance  of  every  danger,  and  makes  an 
eager  multitude,  which  shares  none  of  these  exposures, 
exacting  to  the  point  of  cruelty  in  reference  to  them, 
can  hardly  do  otherwise  than  inflame  the  mind  on  its 
more  passionate  and  brutal  side. 

The  weakening,  by  all  extreme  amusements,  of  the 
more  delicate  bonds  which  unite  us,  is  seen  in  the  irre- 
sistible tendency  to  deepen  the  strife  and  enhance  the 


AMUSEMENTS.  81 

excitement  attendant  on  them  by  betting.  The  heat  of 
the  combatants  runs  through  the  crowd  as  a  gambling 
furor,  and  makes  all  alike  forgetful  of  the  more  gener- 
ous sensibilities  that  are  being  trampled  under  foot.  The 
concomitants  of  a  conflict  often  express  its  interior  tem- 
per quite  as  much  as  the  decorum  of  the  conflict  itself. 

One  connection  which  has  made  us  unfair  judges  of 
popular  amusements  has  been  their  association  with 
athletics,  and  the  fine  enforcement  of  bodily  vigor  found 
in  the  history  of  Greece.  There  are  several  points  in 
this  connection  which  we  confuse.  The  Greeks,  espe- 
cially in  their  more  prosperous  period,  aimed  at  per- 
sonal and  national  development.  They  discouraged 
professional  champions  and  dangerous  methods  —  as 
the  armed  glove  in  boxing.  Precisely  as  these  undesir- 
able accessories  gained  ground,  the  amphitheatre  and 
the  arena,  as  in  Roman  life,  were  substituted  for  the 
popular  assembly  and  the  open  field.  The  gymnastics 
of  the  Greeks  were  good,  and  remained  good,  so  far  and 
so  long  as  they  united  themselves  to  universal  national 
development,  so  far  as  they  were  held  in  subjection  to 
the  more  vital  interests  associated  with  them.1 

We  are  also  to  remember  that  physical  strength, 
though  it  is  nourished  by  severe  athletics,  is,  in  a  large 
measure,  expended  again  in  the  same  process.  This 
strength  is  to  be  distinguished  from  that  health  which 
brings  forward  the  body  in  the  best  condition  to  meet 
all  the  varied  demands  laid  upon  it.  Severe  exertion 
throws  the  full  current  of  life  in  one  direction ;  it 
deepens  it  and  consumes  it  by  a  single  movement.     Re- 

1  "  Essays  on  tlie  Art  of  Pheidias,"  Ch.  Waldestein,  2d  appendix; 
"  Social  Life  in  Greece,"  J.  P.  Mahaffy,  p.  .VM . 


82  CUSTOMS. 

strained  exercise  affords  relaxation,  restores  the  tone 
of  the  system,  and  leaves  it  ready  for  the  widest  and 
most  general  exercise  of  its  powers.  Athletics  which 
approach  professional  performance  are  unfavorable  to 
those  highest  possibilities  which  inhere  in  simple 
health.  What  the  athlete  gains  he  uses  up  in  exacting 
work,  and  leaves  only  a  small  remainder  of  nervous 
energy  to  be  employed  elsewhere.  This  method  also 
tends  in  a  community  of  young  men  to  concentrate 
training  on  those  who  best  respond  to  it,  and  make  the 
majority  idle  spectators  of  what  they  cannot  emulate. 
Thus,  in  place  of  wholesome,  wide,  and  sympathetic 
sports,  we  have  severe  contests  between  the  few  whose 
personal  powers  and  proclivities  admit  of  them. 

The  temptations  of  amusements  are  always  recurring, 
and  are  to  be  met  only  by  an  ever-enlarging  conception 
of  the  fulness  and  harmony  of  life,  by  respecting  in  all 
our  action  the  manifold  claims  which  rest  upon  us. 


CIVIC  CUSTOMS.  83 


CHAPTER  II. 
CIVIC    CUSTOMS. 

§  1.  Four  forms  of  action  may  be  designated  as  civic 
customs  :  economic  customs,  portions  of  constitutional 
law,  judicial  law,  and  portions  of  administrative  law. 
Nowhere  do  customs  unite  themselves  more  closely  to 
distinctly  devised  and  voluntary  methods  of  action, 
than  in  civics.  Nowhere  are  customs  more  habitually 
reshaped  under  a  direct  apprehension  of  what  is  fit  in 
action.  Customary  law  and  statute  law  are  in  constant 
action  and  reaction  on  each  other.  Customary  law  is  modi- 
fied by  enactments,  and  enactments  are  shaped  into  har- 
mony with  customs.  Law  foots  far  back  and  deep  in 
the  soil  of  custom ;  but  this  soil  has  been  formed  and 
fertilized  by  much  thoughtful  consideration  of  the  results 
of  action.  In  civics  more  than  elsewhere  the  instinctive, 
the  familiar,  stand  in  close  dependence  on  the  rational, 
the  free.  In  the  development  of  the  state,  reason  enters 
early  and  is  ever  gaining  ground  on  blindly  organic  forces. 
Custom  in  law  has  a  higher  qualit}%  is  more  transparent, 
more  permeable  to  the  light  of  thought,  than  elsewhere. 
It  is  thus  less  capable  of  a  distinct  treatment  as  custom 
simply.  It  is  almost  by  a  figure  of  speech  that  we  call 
a  profound  judicial  decision  a  custom.  It  does,  indeed, 
stand  in  continuation  of  long  lines  of  familiar  action, 
but  it  is  also  shaped  in  a  clear  view  of  the  fitness  of 
these  actions,  and  unites  them  to  each  other  and  to  im- 
mediate objects. 


84  CUSTOMS. 

So  true  is  this  that  we  can  better  consider  the  social 
bearings  of  constitutional  and  judicial  law  in  connection 
with  Civics  than  in  connection  with  Customs.  The 
rational  elements  weigh  more  in  it  than  do  the  instinc- 
tive ones.  We  pass,  therefore,  lightly  the  customs 
that  are  involved  in  the  meshwork  of  the  law  with  a 
general  notice  of  their  character,  reserving  the  rela- 
tions involved  in  them  for  a  fuller  treatment  under 
Civics. 

§  2.  Economic  customs  consist  of  the  familiar  forms 
which  business  assumes,  and  under  which  its  obligations 
are  enforced.  The  civil  law  adopts  these  customs  in 
framing  its  decisions.  The  law,  in  accepting  an  obliga- 
tion, a  property  right,  accepts  also  the  methods  under 
which  that  right  has  attached.  Custom  defines  the 
forms  of  honesty,  the  stage  at  which  a  contract  becomes 
binding,  reasonable  care  in  handling  and  keeping  goods, 
in  what  delivery  consists.  The  civil  law  recognizes 
these  customs  —  occasionally  redefining  them  —  as  the 
conditions  which  determine  the  legal  obligations  present 
in  them.  Law  cannot,  in  a  wide  field  of  complex  action, 
reconstruct  methods  ;  it  must  work  under  the  methods 
already  familiar.  Thus  a  large  amount  of  commercial 
practice  gains  for  itself  the  force  of  law. 

In  economics,  as  elsewhere,  the  earlier  periods  are 
periods  of  custom.  The  form  defines  the  relation  as 
much  as  the  relation  the  form.  As  long  as  men  were 
associated  in  the  village  community,  they  had,  in  refer- 
ence to  each  other,  some  definite  standing.  These  con- 
nections were  looser  and  less  kindly  than  those  of  the 
household,  but  not  unlike  them.  "  In  early  English  life 
every  man  belonged  to  a  parish  or  a  manor,  and  had  a 


ECONOMIC   CUSTOMS.  85 

stake  in  it."  1  The  stranger  must  form  some  distinct 
connections,  or  he  was  wholly  alien  to  the  life  about 
him.  He  was  not  received  into  it  except  in  a  specific 
way.  The  landless  man,  the  man  not  united  directly  or 
indirectly  to  the  soil,  was  an  outlaw,  in  the  wider  sense. 
As  custom  defined  the  dependence,  it  defined  also  the 
mutual  services  included  in  it. 

As  communities  increased  in  numbers  and  individual- 
ism became  more  pronounced,  customs  were  weakened, 
and  the  relations  of  man  to  man  came  under  more  gen- 
eral influences.  Rent,  which  in  the  outset  was  a  strictly 
customary  claim,  fell  under  the  law  of  competition.  It 
rose  twelve  times  in  the  seventeenth  century,  and  came 
to  assume  the  ugly  form  of  rack-rent.2  With  the  disso- 
lution of  the  kindlier  ties,  competition  came  in  to  take 
their  place.  It  first  found  expression  in  periodical 
markets,  where  many,  from  remote  communities,  met 
for  mutual  exchange.  In  these  large  and  transient 
assemblies  of  comparative  strangers  local  customs  were 
no  longer  applicable,  and  each  man  did  the  best  he  could 
with  his  goods  —  the  bounds  between  cheating  and  fair 
trade  being  much  obscured. 

We  have  come  to  look  on  competition,  which  found 
entrance  in  connection  with  these  less  intricate  and 
responsible  relations,  as  a  kind  of  natural  law,  authori- 
tative and  fundamental.  As  it  came  with  a  change  of 
circumstances,  it  may,  by  a  farther  transformation  of 
society,  be  limited  in  its  scope  or  pass  away.  Competi- 
tion is  itself  a  law  of  custom,  incident  to  active,  wide, 

■  *  "  Economic  Interpretation  of  History,"  J.  E.  Thorold  Rogers, 
p.  295. 

2  Ibid,  p.  403. 


86  CUSTOMS. 

and  eager  productive  relations.  It  is  variable  in  form, 
ranging  from  a  kindly  emulation  in  productive  labor, 
ensuring  general  prosperity,  to  an  intense  struggle,  in 
which  building  up  and  pulling  down  are  the  counterparts 
of  each  other  under  the  single  law  of  the  prevalence  of 
superior  sagacity.  There  is  nothing  whatever  in  compe- 
tition, the  existing  custom  of  commercial  communities, 
which  exempts  it  from  searching  inquiry  both  as  to  its 
economic  and  its  moral  force.  Indeed,  there  is  a  pre- 
sumption that  real  progress  will  bring  higher  impulses 
here  as  elsewhere. 

§  3.  The  earlier  forms  of  constitutional  law  are  al- 
most exclusively  those  of  custom.  Instinctive,  organic 
forces  first  prevail.  Men  have  not  wisdom  enough,  nor 
sufficient  coherence  in  reason,  to  devise  and  enforce 
government.  Earlier  customs  looked  to  the  safety  of 
the  ruler.  This  was  the  primary  necessity,  and  this 
involved  and  led  to  the  safety  of  the  subject.  No  gov- 
ernment can  be  absolute.  The  sovereign  can  execute 
his  will  only  through  servants.  These  agents  of  his 
wishes  have  their  own  interests  and  inclinations.  They 
can  never  be  a  simply  neutral  medium  between  the  ruler 
and  his  subjects.  Their  own  personality  enters  into 
their  work.  Power  meets  with  new  limitations  as  it 
passes  outward  in  each  wider  circle  of  activity.  It 
defines  itself  afresh  under  the  possibilities  offered  by 
those  who  receive  it  and  carry  it  forward.  Habitual 
feelings,  familiar  methods,  customs,  define  at  once  its 
character  and  progress. 

Earlier  governments  are  necessarily  conceived  on  the 
side  of  the  interest  of  the  ruler,  rather  than  on  that  of 
the  welfare  of  the  citizen.     Services  are  rendered  for 


JUDICIAL    CUSTOMS.  87 

the  general  safety  in  the  form  of  strengthening  the 
king;  through  him,  all  prosperity  flows  downward  to 
the  people.  This  simple  personal  relation  is  slowly 
clothed  with  all  those  obligations  and  restraints  by 
which  it  is  transformed  into  a  constitutional  govern- 
ment, embracing  and  sheltering  innumerable  interests 
everywhere.  It  is  this  slow  constructive  growth  of 
customs  and  devices,  this  weaving  together  of  circum- 
stances and  men's  thoughts  concerning  them,  which 
make  the  development  of  the  English  Constitution  so 
interesting  and  instructive. 

No  matter  how  closely,  instantaneously,  and  abso- 
lutely a  constitution  —  like  our  own  constitution —  may 
be  ordained,  it  still  remains  dependent  on  custom,  first, 
for  its  original  fitness;  secondly,  for  the  energy  and 
safety  with  which  it  will  pass  into  execution;  and, 
thirdly,  for  those  farther  expositions  and  modifications 
by  which  it  will  suit  itself  to  existing  and  to  changing 
circumstances.  Customs  are  as  inescapable  in  the  com- 
munity as  are  habits  in  the  human  body. 

§  4.  The  theory  of  judicial  law  is  that  the  decisions 
of  the  courts  are  simply  the  expression  of  existing  laws, 
of  customs  that  have  immemorial  sanction.  These  laws 
are  customs,  as  they  have  never  been  enacted,  but  have 
been  slowly  defined  under  the  progress  of  the  interests 
and  actions  which  they  concern.  Men's  minds  have 
come  universally  to  accept  them  under  the  growing  force 
of  experience.  This  theory  covers  the  great  majority 
of  decisions,  but  not  the  most  significant  ones.  These 
arise  in  reconciliation,  modification,  or  redirection  of 
customs.  Yet  these  changes,  if  well  made,  are  made 
with  no  apparent  breach  of  continuity,  since  the  better 


88  CUSTOMS. 

judgment  is  evolved  by  giving  greater  force  to  one  or 
another  legal  principle  which  contains  the  key  of  the 
position.  The  wiser  rendering  is  merely  a  more  pro- 
found unfolding  of  the  social  and  legal  force  of  events. 

The  power  to  penetrate  to  the  core  of  legal  maxims, 
in  order  to  elicit  from  them  a  new  phase  of  growth, 
suited  to  existing  wants,  is  the  power  of  a  great  judge. 
The  development  of  judicial  law  is,  at  bottom,  a  moral 
unfolding  of  society  on  the  side  of  its  civic  obligations. 
The  ethical  element  is  uppermost,  though  it  is  at  once 
sustained  and  concealed  by  existing  relations,  social 
necessities,  and  economic  claims.  Customary  methods 
and  moral  forces  are  woven  together  in  the  even,  firm, 
and  serviceable  fabric  of  civil  law.  Ethical  reason  con- 
tends with  social  inertia,  and  the  two  flow  on  together 
through  all  the  doublings  and  depths  and  shallows  of 
legal  prescription.  This  process  has  found  full  ex- 
pression in  three  great  channels  of  law  :  Civil  Law, 
Canon  Law,  and  Common  Law.  Other  developments 
have  been  contributory  or  secondary  streams. 

The  theoretical  excellence  of  law  is  much  superior  to 
its  practical  results.  We  are  astonished  at  the  subtilty, 
force,  variety,  and  justness  of  its  conclusions,  and  are 
equally  astonished  at  the  delays,  perplexities,  and  in- 
juries of  law  in  its  actual  administration.  This  in- 
effectual strife  of  reason  and  custom  will  claim  farther 
attention  under  Civics. 

§  5.  Much  of  the  inadequacy  which  marks  the  history 
of  law  has  found  entrance  in  connection  with  admin- 
istrative customs.  The  temper  in  which  law  is  adminis- 
tered is  even  more  efficacious  for  good  or  for  evil  than 
the  letter  of  the  law  itself.     In  the  use  of  the  law,  cus- 


ADMINISTRATION   CUSTOMS.  89 

torn  gains  its  greatest  authority.  The  details  of  processes, 
almost  necessarily  complicated  and  easily  becoming  more 
so,  are  sure  to  take  on  familiar  methods — methods 
which  become  identified  in  men's  minds  with  justice 
itself,  even  when  they  most  embarrass  it.  A  court-room, 
by  virtue  of  customs  which  most  men  have  ceased  to 
question,  may  become  a  place  in  which  legal  acumen 
raises  technical  distinctions,  and  wrangles  over  them, 
and  holds  justice  at  bay  by  means  of  them,  rather  than 
a  place  in  which  justice,  with  sure,  precise,  and  rapid 
steps,  reaches  its  object. 

Perhaps  no  better  example  can  be  given  of  the  man- 
ner in  which  the  meshes  of  law  —  like  a  net  dragged 
over  shallow  places  —  gather  obstructions,  and  are  caught 
and  broken  by  obstacles,  than  the  very  complex  and 
legally  acute  system  of  practice  which  arose  in  Eng- 
lish courts.  Its  astuteness  at  length  became  fatal  to  its 
efficiency.  The  skill  that  grew  up  in  connection  with 
the  use  of  the  weapon  thwarted  the  straightforward 
and  downright  blow.  Law  became  a  thing  of  fence  in 
which  the  skill  of  the  practitioners  was  more  conspicu- 
ous and  more  interesting  than  the  merits  of  the  case. 
Methods  which  were  designed  to  hasten  and  make  safe 
the  processes  of  law  may  thus  become  occasions  of  ob- 
struction. Legal  custom  and  legal  temper  are  identified 
with  methods  which  are  easily  used,  and  constantly  used, 
to  embarrass  justice.  The  judge  becomes  an  umpire 
whose  first  duty  it  is  to  enforce  the  law  of  the  game ; 
it  is  only  a  secondary  duty  to  guide  it  to  a  prosperous . 
issue. 

Nowhere  do    the  incrustations  of  custom  form   more 
readily  or  with  more  undesirable  restraint  than  in  pro- 


90  CUSTOMS. 

fessional  action.  Nowhere  do  they  assume  more  sanctity 
in  the  eyes  of  those  subject  to  them.  Nowhere  is  ex- 
terior criticism  more  sharply  rejected,  and  nowhere  do 
these  embarrassments  need  to  be  more  frequently 
cleared  away,  that  the  processes  of  life  may  become 
once  more  simple,  sympathetic,  and  effective. 


RELIGIOUS   CUSTOMS.  91 


CHAPTER   III. 
RELIGIOUS    CUSTOMS. 

§  1.  Religious  customs  are  of  two  forms,  rites  and 
observances.  Rites  are  religious  acts  ordered  by  the 
officers  of  religion,  or  under  their  immediate  direction. 
Baptism,  the  Mass,  ceremonials  of  worship,  are  rites. 
Observances  are  religious  acts  of  a  less  definite  and  pre- 
scribed character,  left  in  their  performance  to  the  dis- 
cretion of  the  individual.  The  keeping  of  religious 
festivals,  the  regard  of  Sunday,  and  attendance  on  wor- 
ship, are  observances. 

Customs  pre-eminently  show  their  subtilty  and  con- 
structive power,  and  their  ability  to  resist  change,  in 
connection  with  religion.  Two  very  conflicting  feelings 
take  possession  of  us  in  the  presence  of  extended  reli- 
gious observances.  We  are  deeply  impressed  with  the 
volume  and  uplifting  force  they  give  to  the  profound 
but  obscure  feelings  of  the  human  heart,  the  degree  in 
which  they  accentuate  and  accumulate  sentiments  other- 
wise fugitive  and  ineffective,  the  vigor  of  a  religious 
life  made  palpable  and  masterful  by  means  of  them  ; 
and,  on  the  other  hand,  we  see  how  easily  these  rites 
become  formal,  empty,  deceptive,  the  hard  shell  of  a 
faith  whose  vital  force  is  dormant,  or  has  disappeared. 
While  at  times  they  are  the  highest  possible  expression 
of  spiritual  impulses,  at  times  they  divide  and  sub- 
divide and  spread  widely  over  the  actions  of  men,  with 


92  CUSTOMS. 

little  power  to  call  out  and  correct  the  affections.  No- 
where is  the  universal  struggle  by  which  form  and  sub- 
stance, the  instruments  of  life  and  life  itself,  are  kept 
in  harmonious  dependence  on  each  other,  more  manifest 
than  in  religious  customs. 

§  2.  Rites  and  observances  —  which  glide  into  each 
other  as  in  a  liturgy  —  arise  in  expression  and  extension 
of  religious  feeling.  It  is  difficult  to  voice  appropriately 
and  collectively  religious  faith.  The  method  of  worship 
and  the  language  of  adoration  must  divorce  themselves 
from  the  feebleness  and  superstitions  of  the  individual, 
and  take  on  pure  and  commanding  utterances.  This  is 
accomplished  by  the  rites  of  religion,  shaped  to  the 
most  devout  sentiments  of  those  who  employ  them. 

They  also  arise  as  a  means  of  giving  the  most  social 
authority  to  faith.  Collective  worship  must  have  meth- 
ods, bringing  into  harmonious  expression  the  feelings  of 
those  engaged  in  it.  The  rites  of  religion  help  to  make 
clear  and  concordant  the  ideas  of  those  who  employ 
them.  They  also  gain  by  use  and  association  a  force 
which  identifies  them  more  and  more  with  all  that  is 
sacred  and  touching  in  human  experience.  They  ac- 
quire a  growing  wealth  in  the  unfolding  life  of  a  com- 
munity. 

They  serve  also  to  extend  religious  authority.  Eccle- 
siastical rule  is  quietly  administered  in  connection  with 
them.  The  Catholic  Church,  the  most  powerful  of  organ- 
izations, owes  a  large  share  of  its  influence  to  an  elabo- 
rate and  imposing  ritual.  Its  numerous  and  thoroughly 
organized  clergy  could  hardly  find  an  adequate  reason 
for  being,  or  a  means  of  contact  with  the  popular  mind, 
otherwise  than  through  the  administration  of  its  ritual. 


RELIGIOUS   CUSTOMS.  93 

It  is  by  means  of  its  ritual  that  the  Catholic  Church 
touches  and  gives  color  to  every  solemn  moment  in  the 
experience  of  the  devotees  of  faith.  A  very  distinct 
religious  sentiment,  and  one  that  carries  with  it  the  autho- 
rity of  religious  ministrations,  is  woven  into  the  entire 
fabric  of  life. 

Religious  customs  also  spring  up  in  extension  of  re- 
ligious systems.  A  faith  gains  form  by  means  of  them, 
and  a  form  which  is  capable  of  a  visible  and  ready  trans- 
fer. The  bounds  of  the  religious  life  are  laid  down,  and 
it  is  easy  to  give  it  formal  enforcement.  There  is  some- 
thing present  to  satisfy  the  sensuous  impulses,  and  be- 
come a  visible  sign  of  spiritual  victories.  Men  are  not 
left  to  an  impalpable  life  of  faith  too  subtile  for  them, 
but  are  brought  to  the  immediate  performance  of  definite 
acts,  open  to  the  rendering  of  all.  A  faith,  simple  in  its 
forms  of  worship,  stripped  of  salient  features,  making 
its  appeal  directly  to  the  thoughts  of  men,  suffers  dis- 
advantage and  lacks  organizing  power  in  dealing  with 
the  masses. 

§  3.  Religious  customs  pre-eminently  need,  if  they  are 
to  enlarge  and  correct  the  life  they  enclose,  perpetual 
improvement.  Of  all  customs  they  are  the  most  conser- 
vative, the  most  difficult  to  develop  in  new  directions. 
They  lack  a  perfectly  plain,  practical  basis.  They  fulfil 
subtile  and  remote  ends.  They  are  slow  and  hesitating 
in  their  formation.  They  are  oftentimes  the  product  of 
many  centuries,  and  owe  much  of  their  fitness  and  influ- 
ence to  historic  associations.  These  facts  make  it  hard 
to  meddle  with  them.  They  seem  to  have  arisen  by  a 
force  quite  beyond  ourselves,  and  to  have  created  the 
life  they  watch  over.     Men  humbly  submit  themselves 


94  CUSTOMS. 

to  them  rather  than  boldly  criticise  them.  Criticism, 
when  it  arises,  becomes  almost  immediately  destructive 
and  revolutionary.  Overthrow  is  easier  than  serious 
modification. 

These  rites  are  primarily  addressed  to  the  feelings. 
The  reasons  which  sustain  them  come  in  connection 
with  sentiments.  But  familiar  rites  more  and  more  pos- 
sess and  control  the  heart,  and  are  thus  kept  strong  and 
whole  within  themselves.  It  is  not  easy  to  alter  feelings, 
keeping  within  the  domain  of  the  feelings  themselves. 

Personal  impressions  have  also  much  to  do  with  the 
perpetuity  of  rites.  A  spiritual  tendency,  by  virtue  of 
the  spiritual  interpretation  it  carries  with  it,  will  bear 
men  in  matters  of  ritual  in  one  direction  or  another, 
irrespective  of  the  ordinary  forms  of  judgment.  The 
question  is  not  as  to  the  impressions  which  may  come 
to  indifferent  minds,  but  as  to  the  sentiments  called  out 
in  those  distinctly  predisposed  to  a  given  form.  Thus 
the  Tractarian  Movement  in  Oxford  carried  J.  H.  New- 
man into  Catholicism,  Pusey  into  High-clmrchism,  Keble 
into  a  strenuous  form  of  devotion,  F.  Newman  into 
Theism,  and  Mark  Pattison  into  Agnosticism.  The 
force  of  ordinary  religious  convictions  and  customs  once 
broken,  the  tendencies  became  dispersive.  The  final  re- 
sults are  to  be  judged,  not  by  any  absolute  standard, 
but  in  connection  with  the  proclivities  of  each  person. 

§  4.  It  thus  happens  that  the  religious  life  becomes 
almost  unavoidably  one  of  the  most  conservative  forces 
in  society.  It  fails,  by  virtue  of  the  very  strength  it 
has  already  achieved,  to  recognize  the  new  impulses 
that  are  urging  themselves  upon  it.  Social  reform 
rarely  finds  its  first  impulse  in  current  religious  belief. 


RELIGIOUS   CUSTOMS.  95 

The   more   ritualistic   is   a  faith,   the  less  able  is  it  to 
accept  and  perform  a  new  service. 

"  "What,  broken  is  the  rack  ?     "Well  done  of  thee! 

Did  I  forget  to  abrogate  its  use  ? 

Be  the  mistake  in  common  with  us  both! 
One  more  fault  our  blind  age  shall  answer  for. 
Down  in  my  book  denounced  though  it  must  be 
Somewhere.     Henceforth  find  truth  by  milder  means. 

Ah,  but  Religion  did  we  wait  for  thee 
To  ope  the  book  that  serves  to  sit  upon 
And  find  such  place  out,  we  should  wait  indeed. 

That  is  all  history."  * 

l  "  The  Ring  and  the  Book,"  Robert  Browning,  p.  41. 


96  CUSTOMS. 


CHAPTER   IV. 
CUSTOMS    AND    REFOKMS. 

§  1.  We  are  now  prepared  to  see  the  part  customs 
play  in  social  development.  They  express  the  primi- 
tive, instinctive,  organic  forces  among  men.  Men  are 
gregarious,  and  the  form  this  fact  assumes  is  that  of 
customs.  Customs  are  the  basis  on  which  all  the  later 
laws  of  society  are  built.  Reason  starts  from  customs, 
gets  footing  by  means  of  them,  and  returns  the  fruits 
of  its  own  work  to  their  protection  and  enforcement. 
Customs  relieve  reason  of  the  burden  of  the  work  it 
has  already  done,  and  puts  it  at  liberty  to  do  farther 
work.  They  give  restfulness  to  social  strength.  They 
are  what  habits  are  in  the  body  of  man,  storing  up 
its  acquisitions  of  skill. 

Customs  govern  the  masses  of  men,  with  whom  rea. 
son  is  not  an  immediate  and  sufficient  authority. 
Reason  extends  itself  from  its  living  centres  in  the 
minds  of  a  few,  by  virtue  of  customs,  till  it  reaches,  at 
length,  the  least  intellectually  vital  strata  of  society- 
Men  keep  step  with  one  another  and  march  as  one  solid 
body  by  virtue  of  customs.  They  share  obscure  feel- 
ings when  they  are  not  able  to  share  clear  convictions. 

Customs  stand  for  the  past.  The  growth  of  the  past, 
the  social  and  moral  achievements  of  the  past,  are  rep- 
resented in  rectified  and  purified  customs.  The  con- 
servative   temper   is    deeply   aware  of   the    safety  and 


PART  PLAYED   BY  CUSTOMS.  97 

strength  which  usher  in  customs,  and  reverences  them 
as  the  custodians  of  all  sacred  things.  Perhaps  no  one 
has  had  a  more  penetrative  insight  into  the  customs 
which  lie  at  the  basis  of  the  English  constitution,  or 
has  held  them  in  more  awe,  than  Edmund  Burke.  This 
feeling,  grounded  in  the  deepest  reason,  quite  tran- 
scended reason  and  became  a  blinding  sentiment.1  The 
shock  of  the  French  Revolution  to  the  sober  mind  of 
England  was  so  great  as  to  repress  the  earlier  enthu- 
siasm called  out  by  the  pursuit  of  liberty.  Revolution, 
passing  certain  limits,  dissolves  the  force  of  customs, 
becomes  the  sport  of  passion,  and  sinks  into  lawless 
cruelty.  Every  restraint  suddenly  gives  way,  as  in  the 
breaking  up  of  an  ice-floe.  Social  and  moral  forces 
cease  to  act  in  their  wonted  ways,  or  with  their  wonted 
energy.  All  ties  are  loosened.  No  matter  where  one 
plants  his  feet,  the  usual  supports  fail  him.  There 
are  no  sure  grounds  of  concurrent  action.  We  are 
not  aware  of  the  many  expectations,  the  various  forms 
of  confidence,  the  familiar  and  reliable  methods  by 
which  society  is  bound  together  and  gains  security  in 
effort,  till  some  paralysis  of  fear  runs  through  all. 
The  power  of  the  Catholic  Church  over  the  imagination 
is  due  chiefly  to  the  fact  that  it  has  gathered  into 
itself  the  strength  of  many  centuries  by  a  continuous, 
coherent  growth  of  sentiment. 

As  customs  are  rooted  in  the  feelings  more  than  in 
the  thoughts,  as  they  stand  for  the  instinctive  energy 

1  "  Reflections  on  the  French  Revolution,"  "  Thoughts  on  French 
Affairs)"  "  Appeal  from  the  New  to  the  Old  Whigs,"  vols.  ii.  and  iii. 
of  Works;  "The  Foundation  of  Belief,"  A.  J.  Balfour,  part  iii. 
chap.  ii. 


98  CUSTOMS. 

of  the  vital  processes  which  enclose  us,  they  are  only 
partially  amenable  to  reason.  Reasons  against  them 
must  be  rendered  many  times  in  many  places ;  they 
must  begin  in  turn  to  call  out  general  feeling  before 
the  better  method  can  safely  take  the  place  of  the 
older  form.  The  French  are  a  peculiarly  logical  people, 
and  for  that  very  reason  social  reconstruction  is  violent 
and  perplexed  with  them.  A  nation  cannot  rely  on  a 
demonstration  as  a  general  and  safe  motive  of  action. 
Reasons  are  too  evenly  divided  between  factions.  That 
which  carries  men  forward  in  masses  is  some  common 
sentiment  or  common  custom  that  has  instant  unrea- 
soned force  with  them.  Reason,  in  its  diversity  of 
premises,  is  more  often  a  divisive  than  a  uniting  power. 
It  has  been  found  difficult  in  France  to  administer  a 
free  constitutional  government  because  of  the  diversity 
and  violence  of  opinions,  because  of  the  lack  of  con- 
trolling feelings  binding  large  numbers  together.  A 
social  movement  that  is  safe  and  continuous  must  start 
in  custom  and  return  to  custom  ;  must  be  sufficiently 
slow  to  allow  reasons  to  spread  widely  in  the  commu- 
nity and  call  out  the  feelings  which,  in  the  moment  of 
conflict,  are  to  support  them. 

§  2.  This  reshaping  of  the  social  life,  both  to  meet 
and  to  give  advanced  conditions,  is  what  we  know  as 
reform.  Reform  involves  a  modification  of  conventional 
feelings,  of  customs  and  of  laws  in  behalf  of  the  general 
welfare.  The  point  at  which  this  movement  first  shows 
itself  is  public  opinion.1  Public  opinion  is  the  current 
conviction  on  any  subject,  under  active  thought,  in  the 
general   or  national   mind.     Conventional   sentiment  is 

i  "The  American  Commonwealth,"  James  Bryce,  vol.  ii.  part  iv. 


REFORM.  99 

a  conviction  present  in  the  national  mind  under  passive 
thought.  Conventional  sentiment  is  the  remainder  when 
public  opinion  has  passed  its  active  stage  and  settled 
down  into  habitual  feelings. 

Public  opinion,  as  a  formative  force  in  a  community, 
involves  intelligence  and  freedom.  Social  truths  must 
come  under  discussion,  and  conclusions  concerning  them 
must  spread  from  mind  to  mind.  Active  minds  thus 
stand  in  connection  with  less  active  ones,  and  assume 
the  leadership  natural  to  them. 

A  reformatory  movement  is  initiated  by  a  change  in 
public  opinion.  The  stage  of  discussion,  extension,  and 
enforcement  is  passed  in  this  purely  social  and  moral 
realm.  On  the  change  of  public  opinion  follows  a  cor- 
responding change  of  conventional  sentiment,  and  with 
it  come  altered  customs  and  altered  laws.  There  are 
likely  to  be  in  any  reform  which  strikes  at  all  deeply 
into  social  life  one  or  more  periods  of  reaction.  Public 
opinion,  resting  on  intrinsic  reasons,  pushes  forward  a 
change  in  customs  or  in  laws  so  rapidly  that  the  move- 
ment is  not  fully  sustained  by  conventional  sentiment. 
The  new  feelings  have  not  had  time  to  replace  the  old 
ones.  This  fact  discloses  itself  by  the  weakness  of  the 
new  custom,  or  the  new  law,  under  some  unexpected 
attack  on  it.  The  reform  is  thrown  back  onto  the  pre- 
vious stage  of  discussion  and  moral  enforcement.  These 
reactions  are  unavoidable,  and  ultimately  subserve  the 
purpose  of  progress.  Social  movement  is  rhythmical, 
and  not  uniformly  progressive.  The  second  discussion 
takes  a  deeper  hold  than  was  possible  to  the  first  discus- 
sion. The  opposition  cannot  be  fully  overcome  till  it 
completely  manifests  itself. 


100  CUSTOMS. 

The  authoritative  element  in  reform  is  custom  and 
law;  the  moral  element  is  public  opinion.  The  two 
arise  in  constant  action  and  reaction,  till  they  at  length 
gain  an  equilibrium  at  a  higher  level.  The  law  comes 
to  express  public  opinion,  and  makes  a  new  appeal  to  it 
for  support.  The  practical  difficulties  of  the  reform  are 
exposed  by  the  law  in  due  order,  and  in  due  order  over- 
come. The  public  mind  is  held  to  its  work  by  conjoint 
discussion  and  action.  It  loses  its  hold  on  either  with- 
out the  other.  The  idea  that  public  opinion,  the  moral 
element,  can  first  be  completely  shaped  within  itself, 
and  then,  as  an  entirely  adequate  force,  pass  quietly  on 
to  modify  custom  and  law,  is  altogether  fanciful.  It  is 
only  by  travelling  backwards  and  forwards  many  times, 
over  the  same  ground,  that  the  path  of  progress  is  at 
length  beaten  smooth  and  firm. 

§  3.  The  discussion  which  gives  rise  to  public  opinion 
takes  place  in  private  and  in  public ;  and  in  public  on 
the  platform,  in  the  pulpit,  and  through  the  press.  The 
platform  has  achieved  a  less  permanent  and  distinctive 
position  than  the  pulpit  and  the  press,  yet  it  more  read- 
ily opens  a  way  to  reform  than  either  of  the  other  two. 
It  is  everywhere  the  extemporized  agency  of  free  speech. 
A  movement  must  be  well  under  way  before  it  can  hope 
to  win  the  support  of  the  pulpit,  or  make  itself  freely 
heard  through  the  press.  Both  the  pulpit  and  the  press 
are  preoccupied  means,  looking  to  their  own  ends,  and 
are  not  ready  to  be  enlisted  in  a  new  cause.  A  well- 
sustained  daily  paper,  engaged  in  the  advocacy  of  any 
reform,  is  proof  sufficient  that  the  public  ear  has  already 
been  won. 

The  platform  has  fewer  conventional  obstacles,  and 


THE  PRESS  101 

fewer  interests  in  the  way.  It  is  ready  at  once,  on  the 
occasion  of  any  concession  on  the  part  of  the  people,  for 
any  strength  in  the  advocate,  and  so,  as  with  Bright 
and  Cobden,  Garrison  and  Phillips,  is  the  earlier  means 
of  reaching  the  public.  A  "free  fight"  is  consonant 
with  its  entire  history.  The  pulpit  and  the  press  are  so 
much  more  extended  and  powerful  agencies  than  the 
platform,  that  they  overshadow  it  as  the  movement 
gains  ground. 

We  can  best  discuss  the  social  influences  of  the  pulpit 
in  connection  with  religion.  The  press  is  now  such  a 
universal  and  potent  social  force,  that  we  have  to  deal 
with  it  as  a  primary  agent  in  all  social  changes.  The 
variety  and  the  rapidity  of  social  movements  in  our  time 
are  due  chiefly  to  the  press.  It  is  not  easy  to  speak  of 
the  press  justly,  so  many  and  so  conflicting  are  its 
relations. 

The  press  stands  primarily  for  periodical  literature, 
though  the  great  multiplication,  "xtensive  circulation, 
and  rapid  disappearance  of  books  is  a  fact  which  lies 
in  the  same  direction.  The  number  of  periodicals  and 
the  variety  of  purposes  they  are  intended  to  subserve 
are  a  marvel,  constantly  renewed.  They  differ  from  one 
another  in  a  general  way,  according  to  the  length  of  the 
period  between  successive  publications.  The  quality  of 
their  subject-matter  and  the  nature  of  their  influence 
are  much  affected  by  it.  The  daily  paper,  with  its  dif- 
ferent editions  and  immense  volume,  is  the  buzz-wheel 
of  the  press,  and  the  tardy  quarterlies,  of  whose  slow 
movement  we  hardly  take  note,  are  the  connecting 
wheels  between  the  hidden  impelling  power  and  the 
popular    mind.      The    more    rapid    the    revolution,    the 


102  CUSTOMS. 

more  ephemeral  is  the  matter  thrown  off;  the  more 
deliberate  the  movement,  the  more  thoughtful  the 
message.  From  the  daily  —  keeping  up  with  the 
wheels  of  time,  and  as  ceaseless  as  the  flow  of  events 
—  we  pass  to  the  weekly,  which  crowds  the  news  into 
a  secondary  position,  and  begins  to  take  a  considerate 
outlook  in  various  directions ;  from  the  weekly  to  the 
monthly,  which  satisfies  itself  with  a  condensed  record 
of  events,  and  aims  at  literary  entertainment  and  in- 
struction ;  and  from  the  monthly  to  the  quarterly, 
which  devotes  itself  exclusively  to  philosophy  in  its 
various  forms. 

When  we  speak  of  the  press,  the  mind  brings  into 
the  foreground  as  its  most  significant  feature  the  daily 
paper,  so  much  more  pronounced  in  its  characteristics, 
both  for  good  and  for  evil,  than  its  fellow-workers  in 
the  rear.  That  which  is  sober,  quiet,  and  proportionate, 
gains  ground  as  we  get  out  of  the  strife  and  confusion 
of  the  vanguard  of  what  we  are  wont  to  call  our 
civilization. 

The  press  is  primarily  a  mechanical,  not  a  spiritual, 
fact.  Its  rapid  impress  and  circulation  of  literary  mat- 
ter does  not  directly  alter  the  social  facts  of  which  this 
material  is  the  expression.  There  is  no  renovation  in 
mere  motion.  We  are  tempted  to  glorify  the  invention 
and  energy  of  action  involved  in  the  press  as  if  they 
themselves  were  an  ultimate  good. 

The  press  acts  powerfully  on  the  social  world,  but 
this  action  is  of  a  variable  character.  It  is  not  easy 
to  separate,  even  in  thought,  the  evil  and  the  good  in 
this  influence,  nor  to  check  the  evil  when  it  is  gaining 
ground.     We  draw  attention  to  these  various  affiliations 


THE  PRESS.  103 

of  the  press  as  the  experience  of  our  own  nation  has 
disclosed  them. 

§  4.  The  most  obvious  and  the  most  valuable  pur- 
pose subserved  by  the  press  is  the  diffusion  of  intelli- 
gence. The  business  and  working  classes  rely  chiefly 
on  the  press  for  their  intellectual  food,  and  though  it  is 
often  not  of  the  best,  it  is  in  the  great  majority  of  cases 
much  better  than  none.  The  gains  of  education,  and 
the  motives  to  education,  would  be  much  less  than  they 
now  are  were  it  not  for  the  press.  The  press  gives 
constant  occasion  for  the  use  and  extension  of  the 
knowledge  one  has,  especially  when  that  knowledge 
is  comparatively  limited.  The  periodicals  which  aim 
at  a  careful  presentation  of  the  current  facts  in  me- 
chanics, business,  and  popular  science,  are  wholly  good, 
and  even  a  great  daily  cannot  fail  to  give  much  valu- 
able information.  The  material  for  intellectual  activ- 
ity is  surpassingly  abundant,  chiefly  by  means  of  the 
press. 

It  also  discloses  the  facts,  evil  and  good,  with  which 
the  community  has  to  deal.  "While  this  disclosure  may 
frequently  lead  to  mischief,  the  balance  of  influence  is, 
in  most  communities,  on  the  side  of  virtue.  Knowl- 
edge, even  though  it  includes  the  evil  with  the  good,  is 
not  indifferent  to  social  purity  and  strength.  We  could 
in  no  way  more  profoundly  impugn  moral  forces  than 
by  the  assertion  that  the  complete  record  of  the  world 
does  not  sustain  them.  A  knowledge  of  evil  begets  evil 
chiefly  because  it  is  partial,  garbled,  and  comes  as  an 
appeal  to  that  which  is  already  evil.  Let  the  facts  of 
life  be  given  profoundly,  widely,  truly,  and  the  law  of 
virtue  is  in  them  one  and  all. 


104  CUSTOMS. 

"  I  think  that  in  England  we  scarcely  acknowledge  to  our- 
selves how  much  we  owe  to  the  wise  and  watchful  press,  which 
presides  over  the  formation  of  our  opinions,  and  which  brings 
about  the  splendid  result  —  namely,  that  in  matters  of  belief  the 
humblest  of  us  are  lifted  to  the  level  of  the  most  sagacious,  so 
that  really  a  simple  Cornet  of  the  Blues  is  no  more  likely  to  en- 
tertain a  foolish  belief  about  ghosts  or  witchcraft  or  any  other 
supernatural  topic,  than  the  Lord  High  Chancellor,  or  the  Leader 
of  the  House  of  Commons."  1 

Keformatory  work  must  be  called  out  and  sustained 
by  a  thorough  mastery  of  the  facts  involved  in  it.  "  Of 
all  the  instruments  which  human  wisdom  has  devised,  a 
free  press  is  most  efficacious  in  putting  an  end  to  jobs, 
abuses,  political  malversation  and  corruption."  2  The 
revelations  of  the  press,  like  the  uncovering  of  the 
world  by  daylight,  often  scatters  the  evils  which  have 
gathered  in  darkness.  The  affiliation  of  light  and  truth 
is  fundamental.  The  pertinacity  with  which  the  Times 
pursued  the  corruptions  of  the  Tweed  administration 
in  New  York  City,  and  finally  succeeded  in  bringing 
retribution,  is  an  example  of  the  power  of  exposure. 
Exposure  gives  occasion  to  correction.  It  is  the  moral 
force  of  the  community  which  determines  what  the  re- 
sult shall  be.  If  knowledge  enhances  vice,  it  is  because 
vice  is  already  predominant. 

The  press  gives  great  extension  to  our  communal  life. 
It  offers  a  kind  of  social  intercourse,  by  no  means  the 
best,  but  better  than  isolation.  In  spite  of  all  the  mis- 
apprehensions and  dislikes  occasioned  between  classes 
by  the  press,  they  have  more  knowledge  of  each  other, 

1  "  Eothen,"    A.  W.  Kinglake,  p.  130. 

2  "  History  of  England  in  the  Eighteenth  Century,"  W.  E.  H. 
Lecky,  vol.  iii.  pp.  257,  262. 


THE  PRESS.  105 

and  understand  more  justly  than  they  otherwise  would 
their  common  dependencies  and  interests.  Speech  re- 
mains the  medium  of  thought,  though  much  is  spoken 
foolishly.  This  increased  knowledge  is  a  gain  for  the 
moment  and  a  gain  ultimately.  Wider  information, 
more  general  interest,  constitute  one  of  the  conditions 
of  race-life.  We  accept  the  defective  form  of  earlier 
methods  because,  by  elimination  and  correction,  we  reach 
later  ones.  It  does  not  do  to  repress  the  very  terms 
of  improvement  because  these  terms  are  necessarily 
defective. 

Progress,  though  not  certainly  secured  by  the  press, 
is,  when  once  initiated,  made  far  more  rapid  by  its 
means.  The  discussion  of  the  principles  and  measures 
involved  in  it  is  taken  up  on  all  sides.  Attack  and  de- 
fence, presentation  and  rejoinder,  ruling  principles  and 
qualifying  circumstances,  follow  instantly  on  each  other, 
and  a  few  weeks  do  the  work  of  years  —  and  that  not  in 
the  minds  of  a  few  persons,  but  in  an  entire  community. 
A  movement  of  this  kind  may  be  precipitated.  Theory 
may  outstrip  practice.  Relations  may  be  established  as 
yet  unsustained  by  conventional  sentiment ;  but  these 
are  difficulties  which  we  must  look  to  progress  itself  to 
correct.  The  entire  movement  is  broadened  and  deep- 
ened by  the  press.  The  press  stands  for  the  awakened, 
active,  universal  intellect ;  and  its  conclusions  slowly 
gather  correctness  and  decision.  Diversity  and  vigor, 
error  and  truth,  in  thought  are  the  inevitable  concomi- 
tants of  growth.  It  is  not  the  desirable  features  in  any 
given  movement  that  adequately  characterize  it,  but  its 
ultimate  relation  to  progress.  Instruction  and  correc- 
tion in  the  popular  mind  may  often  be  slow  and  disa- 


106  CUSTOMS. 

greeable  processes,  but  they  are  the  only  telling  ones. 
The  fastidious  thinker  withdraws  from  discussion  be- 
cause it  is  so  rude,  crass,  and  unserviceable,  but  his 
feeling  arises  because  he  is  making  his  measurements 
in  his  own  domain  and  not  in  the  universal  domain. 
The  chief  excellency  of  any  event  is  that  it  offers  wide 
discipline. 

§  5.  With  these  great  gains  are  united  correspond- 
ingly great  and  disagreeable  liabilities.  These  evils  are 
incident  to  certain  phases  of  social  development,  and, 
for  the  time  being,  subsidize  the  press  as  their  most 
ready  instrument. 

The  first  and  milder  of  these  evils  is  that  the  love 
of  news,  as  news  simply,  is  awakened  by  the  news- 
paper. News  is  mistaken  for  knowledge,  gossip  for 
information,  criticism  for  correction,  the  scenic  effects 
of  public  life  for  public  life  itself.  The  morning 
paper  becomes  ephemeral.  A  single  day  or  hour  robs 
it  of  value.  It  is  as  transient  in  its  office  as  the 
cup  of  coffee  to  which  it  leads  the  way.  The  move- 
ments of  men's  minds  become  rapid,  superficial,  and 
meaningless.  This  is  a  radical,  and  oftentimes  an  un- 
observed, mischief,  and  one  that  gives  occasion  to  the 
more  obvious  evils  which  follow  it.  The  mind,  made 
trifling,  puts  no  adequate  estimate  on  serious  facts. 
The  firm  and  stately  growth  of  the  thoughts  being 
arrested,  the  ground  is  overspread  with  weak  but  pro- 
lific sprouts. 

Closely  united  with  this  result  is  a  second  like  unto 
it.  A  love  of  sensation  is  awakened.  Feelings  be- 
come sensuous.  Men  fall  into  the  vulgarity  of  having 
nothing  else  to  do  than   to  tell  or  to  hear  some  new 


THE  PRESS.  107 

thing.  This  general  intellectual  laxness  is  wholly  con- 
sistent with  intense  business  activity.  Indeed  it  easily 
consorts  with  it  as  making  the  least  claims  for  additional 
independent  thought.  Thus  the  life  of  the  citizen  ex- 
presses the  intensively  active,  yet  superficial,  character 
of  the  community.  Proportion  is  lost  between  the  parts 
of  life,  and  sound  judgment  disappears  as  to  the  intrin- 
sic value  of  events.  Men  are  made  dizzy  by  each  eddy 
of  the  stream,  and  are  unable  to  determine  its  direc- 
tion. Notoriety  is  mistaken  for  honor,  and  even  the 
criminal  finds  an  incentive  to  the  crime  in  the  momen- 
tary attention  it  commands. 

Out  of  this  love  of  sensation  conies  at  once  carelessness 
in  reference  to  the  truth.  If  the  truth  does  not  furnish 
the  needed  excitement,  and  in  most  cases  it  does  not,  it 
is  exaggerated,  perverted,  falsified,  till  the  required  ap- 
peal to  the  public  interest  is  secured.  A  lying  spirit  is 
abroad  in  the  newspaper  world.  Great  dailies  pay  large 
salaries  to  those  who  have  most  skill  in  the  coloring  of 
commonplace  facts  and  the  fabrication  of  new  ones. 
"  A  swarm  of  young  men  is  being  trained  up  all  over 
the  country  to  consider  prying  and  lying  and  distorting 
creditable  professional  pursuits,  if  any  fun  can  be  gotten 
out  of  them."  1  "  Managers  are  very  apt  to  stand  by,  to 
the  last  extreme,  a  liar  whose  lies  feed  the  popular  appe- 
tite for  amusement.  This  is  not  a  pleasant  thing  to  say 
about  one's  profession,  but  it  is  as  true  as  gospel.  As  a 
matter  of  fact  some  of  the  most  highly  paid  newspaper 
men  are  notorious  liars,  perverters,  and  inventors." 2 
"As   indifferent  to  the  goal  whither  his  pen  conducts 

i  The  Nation,  March  22,  18'J4. 
2  Ibid,  Nov.  i,  188b-. 


108  CUSTOMS. 

him  as  a  cab-horse  to  the  destination  whither  the  dri- 
ver's 'fare'  is  conveyed."1 

A  fourth  evil  is  hatched  in  this  same  nest  —  a  constant 
and  most  unwarrantable  trespass  on  personal  privacy. 
A  mischievous  curiosity  throws  wide  open  any  door, 
if  it  supposes  the  public  will  take  any  interest  in  the 
events  occurring  behind  it.  Public  characters  and  public 
concerns  come  to  mean  those  which  gratify  the  spirit 
of  gossip.  There  is  in  this  a  great  injury  to  all  delicacy 
of  feeling.  The  community  is  levelled  down,  not  up. 
A  people  fed  by  a  daily  press  of  this  order  comes  to  be 
justly  chargeable  with  vulgarity  —  a  vulgarity  ignorant 
of  itself  and  growing  without  limit.2  This  fault  is  more 
marked  in  the  United  States  than  elsewhere.  New 
York,  one-fourth  the  size  of  London,  has  more  daily 
journals  than  it.  Many  of  our  dailies  are  immense, 
and  can  only  be  kept  full  by  a  diligent  sweeping  of 
the  streets.  The  evil  spreads  to  the  country,  assumes 
a  more  teasing  form,  and  the  village  weekly  is  crammed 
with  trivial  or  scandalous  personal  items,  whose  narra- 
tion springs  from  vulgarity  and  scatters  vulgarity  every- 
where. 

Deeper  than  this  general  disregard  of  truth  and  a 
sound  mind,  there  comes  to  be,  in  connection  with 
personal  and  political  interests,  an  intense  partisan 
temper.  This  takes  almost  complete  possession  of  the 
political  press,  and  extends  even  to  the  religious  press. 
The  political  journal  becomes  an  unscrupulous  and 
blind  defender  of  its  own  party,  and   is  equally  blind 

i  "W.  S.  Lilly,  Forum,  July,  1889. 

2  "The  American  Newspaper  Press," Edward  Delille,  Nineteenth 
Century,  July,  1892. 


THE  PRESS.  109 

and  unscrupulous  in  its  representations  of  the  policy 
and  principles  of  its  opponent.  It  is  difficult,  by  the 
medium  of  the  political  press,  to  arrive  at  the  simplest 
facts,  when  there  is  any  motive  for  misrepresentation. 
The  first  office  of  a  newspaper  is  sacrificed  to  party 
purposes.  This  result  would  not  be  so  unfortunate  as 
it  is,  were  it  not  that  many  citizens,  in  quiet  places 
and  in  limited  lines  of  action,  —  indeed,  many  in  all 
places  and  with  every  opportunity  for  information, — ■ 
are  ignorant  of  the  measure  of  this  deception,  and  suffer 
most  severely  from  it. 

An  example  of  this  temper  was  furnished  by  the  exist- 
ence of  "dens  of  infamy"  in  northern  Wisconsin.  The 
press,  rather  than  allow  the  State  and  those  in  office  to 
suffer  the  disparagement  of  their  presence,  was  disposed 
to  deny  their  existence,  or  to  belittle  them.  A  second 
example  of  this  difficulty  with  which  very  near  and 
plain  facts  are  gotten  before  the  public  when  there  is 
any  motive  for  concealment,  is  the  series  of  oppressive 
measures  by  which  the  miners  in  Spring  Valley  were 
brought  to  the  verge  of  starvation.1  The  number  and 
power  of  those  interested  in  this  act  of  commercial 
tyranny  helped  to  hide  it  from  the  public. 

§  6.  These  great  evils,  which  have  a  tenacious  hold 
on  our  daily  press,  arise  from  the  fact  that  the  press 
primarily  represents  a  money,  and  not  a  moral,  interest. 
It  is  an  investment,  and  as  an  investment  is  looking  for 
dividends.  To  secure  these  dividends  it  must  address 
itself  to  the  masses,  not  for  their  elevation,  but  for  their 
amusement.  It  can  accept  scruples  no  otherwise  than 
an  auctioneer  who  has  undertaken  to  occupy  the  atten- 

1  "  Strike  of  Millionaires  against  Miners,"  II.  D.  Lloyd. 


110  CUSTOMS. 

tion  of  a  street  crowd,  and  gather  in  their  nickels. 
Exactly  the  same  influence  debases  the  daily  press 
that  debases  the  popular  theatre.  The  taste  for  amuse- 
ment in  the  most  numerous  class  is  neither  refined 
nor  scrupulous.  "  To  succeed  now,  a  newspaper  must 
either  be  newsy,  or  breezy,  or  both."  "  He  makes  his 
paper  to  sell,  and  leaves  the  moral  training  of  the 
young  to  the  clergy."  x  The  newspaper  "  sells  news," 
and  often  manufactures  it.  Artemus  "Ward  puts  it 
concisely  :  "  Morals  !  Nary  a  moral.  AVe  are  in  the  gen- 
uine newspaper  business." 

This  statement  of  the  morally  irresponsible  character 
of  the  daily  press  is  not  the  exaggeration  of  a  single 
tendency ;  it  stands  for  a  fundamental  and  controlling 
fact.  The  owner,  rather  than  the  editor,  of  a  great 
paper  determines  its  drift,  and  with  the  owner  the 
paper  is  a  business  concern.  Dr.  Gladden,  in  discuss- 
ing the  relation  of  the  paper  to  the  public,  affirmed, 
"  The  attitude  of  the  average  American  editor  is  one 
of  calm  superiority."  A.  H.  Siegfried,  of  the  Chicago 
Daily  News,  responded,  "It  is  rather  one  of  friendly 
indifference."  2 

There  are  important  personal  exceptions  to  these  stric- 
tures ;  but  the  general  tendency  is  only  too  truly  ex- 
pressed by  them. 

Out  of  this  dependence  of  the  daily  press  on  the  por- 
tion of  society  least  restrained  in  its  tastes  and  least 
sincere  in  its  convictions  there  arise  consequences  of 
much  moment. 

The  daily  press  is  very  sure  to  be  hostile  to  any  ex- 

1  The  Nation,  March  17,  1892. 

2  Christian  Thought. 


THE   PRESS.  Ill 

tended  social  reform,  and  in  the  outset  to  do  all  that  it 
can  to  overwhelm  it  with  obloquy.  Not  till  a  reform 
has  become  formidable  can  it  win  fair  treatment  from 
this  portion  of  the  press.  The  exposures  made  some 
years  since,  in  the  Pall  Mall  Gazette,  of  the  impurity  of 
society  in  London,  called  forth  almost  universal  repro- 
bation. Again  and  again,  in  the  temperance  reform, 
editorials  of  leading  papers  have  been  made,  as  in 
Pennsylvania  and  Nebraska,  the  vehicles  of  the  violent 
allegations  of  the  enemies  of  legal  restraint. 

The  difficulty  of  reform  in  its  earlier  stages  is  thus 
greatly  enhanced  by  the  daily  press.  Facts  are  re- 
pressed, violence  is  covered  up  and  apologized  for,  and 
the  responsibility  for  the  evils  incident  to  agitation  is 
charged  on  those  who  advocate  progress.  The  object 
of  censure  is  not  the  evil,  but  those  who  disturb  society 
by  exposing  the  evil.  The  daily  press  is  in  the  fore- 
ground in  this  hue  and  cry  against  those  who  turn  the 
world  upside  down. 

Irreverence,  blinding  the  minds  and  hardening  the 
thoughts  of  men,  finds  its  constant  expression  in  the 
press.  Headlines  often  owe  their  attractive  power  to 
their  irreverent  and  vulgar  energy.  Bold  and  free  criti- 
cism thus  comes  to  be  very  falsely  associated,  in  the 
popular  mind,  with  a  profane  and  reckless  temper.  As 
the  bluster  of  a  bully  is  mistaken  for  courage,  so  reck- 
lessness of  expression  is  regarded  as  insight.  The 
trampling  underfoot  of  things  decent,  pure,  and  rever- 
ent is  accepted  as  stripping  off  the  disguises  of  hypoc- 
risy. A  confusion  of  good  and  evil  thus  arises,  very 
slow  of  correction. 

Corruptions,  scandals,  crimes,  are  given  a  circulation 


112  CUSTOMS. 

which  does  not  aim  at  removal,  or  tend  to  censure,  but 
rather  to  extension  and  the  general  contamination  of 
thought.  The  sewage  of  a  city  is  stirred  up,  but  not 
carried  away.  The  advocacy  of  the  masses,  the  dis- 
position to  expose  vice  in  high  places,  which  those 
assume  who  employ  these  methods,  are  wholly  mislead- 
ing. The  people  are  betrayed  in  what  purports  to  be 
the  house  of  their  friends. 

The  most  comprehensive  charge  made  against  the 
daily  press,  and  which  gathers  up  all  these  itemized 
accusations  in  one  word,  is  secularization.  A  commu- 
nity is  fearfully  secularized  by  resorting  chiefly  to  the 
daily  press  for  excitement  and  guidance.  We  under- 
stand by  secularization  an  enhancing  of  transient  and 
sensuous  impressions,  till  they  submerge  the  entire  life. 
Interests  which  touch  the  higher  nature,  the  deeper  and 
more  controlling  current  of  events,  the  ethical  render- 
ings of  the  world,  are  lost  sight  of,  and  men  drift  on- 
ward, unmindful  of  the  past  disasters  of  the  world  or 
of  the  portents  of  coming  evil.  This  secularization  was 
apparent  in  the  period  which  preceded  the  final  struggle 
with  slavery.  Weighty  commercial  interests,  familiar 
social  relations,  superficial  and  unethical  theories  of 
society,  sentiments  whose  force  lay  in  constant  reitera- 
tion, put  the  conscience  and  the  foresight  of  the  nation 
at  rest,  made  it  impatient  under  admonition,  and  ren- 
dered the  simple  assertion  of  an  irrepressible  conflict 
between  freedom  and  slavery  seem  like  a  voice  unex- 
pectedly pealing  forth  from  an  invisible  world,  whose 
very  existence  we  had  forgotten.  So  we  passed  on  and 
were  punished. 

The  press,  by  the  attention  it  directs  to  trivial  and 


THE  PRESS.  113 

transient  events,  by*the  light,  mocking  way  in  which 
it  slurs  over  moral  forces,  by  the  weight  it  attaches  to 
things  personal  and  spectacular,  renders  the  national 
mind  shallow  and  unreflective,  with  the  eye  eager  and 
the  ear  restless  for  the  turmoil  of  the  passing  parade, 
but  with  slight  power  to  render  the  occurrences  of  life 
in  terms  of  spiritual  strength. 

The  Sunday  paper  is  to  be  regretted,  not  so  much  in 
itself,  as  one  more  step  in  secularization.  The  events 
of  the  weeks  touch  one  another  through  the  narrow 
space  of  sacred  time,  and  an  unbroken  current  carries 
the  unchastened,  uninstructed  spirit  onward.  Week  is 
coupled  to  week  as  if  each  were  a  freight-car  with  no 
other  purpose  than  to  bear  its  own  burden  forward  in 
the  endless  din  and  clatter  of  commerce. 

The  village  of  Williamstown,  once  Puritanic  and  still 
restful  among  the  mountains,  accepts  cheerfully  such  a 
notice  as  this:  "The  Springfield  Republican,  contain- 
ing a  full  account  of  the  foot-ball  contest  between  Har- 
vard and  Yale,  will  be  on  sale  at  ten  o'clock  Sunday 
morning."  "  One  of  the  many  achievements  of  the 
newspaper  press  during  the  last  century  has  been  to 
deidealize  public  life ;  to  lay  the  axe  at  the  root  of 
duty,  self-devotion,  sacrifice,  the  element  of  the  moral 
greatness  of  a  nation  which  is  its  true  greatness."  '  If 
the  press  is  "the  pulpit  of  the  nineteenth  century,"  it  is 
only  a  pulpit,  and  one  which  the  devil  is  at  perfect  lib- 
erty to  occupy. 

Another    evil    of   the    same    grave    character  is   that 
those  who  control  the  daily  press  come  to  be  possessed 
with  an  overweening  sense  of  power  —  power  divorced 
1  Forum,  July,  1889,  W.  S.  Lilly. 


114  CUSTOMS. 

from  any  corresponding  sense  of  responsibility.  They 
more  frequently  stand  in  the  background,  out  of  sight, 
and  work  a  mechanism  of  stupendous  energy  with  the 
curiosity,  fearlessness,  and  blindness  to  consequences  of 
a  child.  A  grotesquely  self-confident  temper  is  the  very 
last  one  which  should  be  associated  with  the  present 
terms  of  civilization. 

This  irresponsibility  is  apparent  in  advertisements. 
They  are  scattered  recklessly,  with  slight  reference  to 
anything  genuine,  honest,  or  serviceable  in  them.  Such 
a  press  as  that  of  Paris,  powerful  and  unscrupulous, 
identifies  itself  with  such  corruption  as  that  which  over- 
took and  wrecked  the  Panama  Canal.  Widespread  dis- 
honesty is  made  to  lose  something  of  its  dishonorable 
character,  because  it  is  accomplished  by  the  familiar 
methods  of  the  press. 

In  that  saddest  of  sad  events,  the  Homestead  affair, 
with  error  and  suffering  and  grievous  wrong  hopelessly 
commingled,  calling  for  penetrative  spiritual  sympa- 
thies and  sound  judgment  to  scatter  the  darkness  in 
any  good  degree,  our  daily  press,  with  much  unanim- 
ity, united  in  reading  the  workmen  a  few  stale  lec- 
tures on  the  commonplaces  of  Economics,  indicating 
neither  head  nor  heart  for  the  apprehension  of  so 
significant  an  occurrence. 

"  This  wail  in  the  night "  came  and  went,  and  no  one 
of  the  busy  throng  of  newsmen  was  able  to  hear  or  to 
interpret  it. 

§  7.  The  press  thus  bears  to  society  a  very  change- 
able and  conflicting  attitude.  On  the  one  hand,  it  is 
wakeful,  rapid,  and  drives  events  forward  like  a  pon- 
derous piston.     At  some  happy   moment,  moving  in  the 


THE  PRESS.  115 

right  direction,  it  puts  its  whole  power  to  the  task,  and 
carries  society  forward  with  a  throb  of  life  which  runs 
through  its  entire  framework. 

On  the  other  hand,  it  is  often  superficial,  vulgar, 
untruthful,  irresponsible,  and  presumptuous,  giving  its 
great  strength  freely  to  those  who  are  alike  ignorant 
and  careless  of  the  issues  which  come  to  society  under 
eternal  and  righteous  law.  The  instruments  of  civili- 
zation are  getting  in  advance  of  civilization  itself. 
Society  is  a  boat  attached  to  a  whale ;  it  remains  to 
be  seen  whether  the  boat  will  capture  the  whale,  or 
the  whale  wreck  the  boat. 

The  reduction  and  correction  of  these  evils  of  the 
press  lie  in  individual  action.  The  press  is  what  the 
people  make  it.  It  does  not  so  much  give  character 
to  the  people  as  do  the  people  give  character  to  it. 
The  press  gains  its  power  like  a  wind-mill,  by  spread- 
ing its  fans  in  the  current  of  the  wind. 

The  remedy  lies  in  better  individual  life,  more 
strongly  asserted.  It  belongs  to  us  personally  to  sus- 
tain only  a  pure  press,  to  have  and  to  enforce  our 
ideals.  If  the  press  is  mercenary,  it  cannot  escape  this 
persuasion  ;  nor  is  it  so  mercenary  as  not  to  recognize 
the  more  honorable  method.  When  the  good  citizen 
judges  the  press,  the  press  will  submit  to  his  judg- 
ment, and  become  candid,  thoughtful,  and  wholesome. 

It  is  not  difficult  to  determine  what  the  ideal  paper 
is.  Such  a  paper  treats  current  events  with  reference 
to  their  value,  and  gives  us  news,  concise,  reliable,  and 
well  classified.  It  offers  itself  to  us  as  observation,  wider 
and  more  systematic  than  our  own,  and  puts  us  in  a  posi- 
tion to  form  sound   and  comprehensive  judgments.     It 


116  CUSTOMS. 

takes  an  earnest  and  honest  part  in  shaping  opinions  — 
itself  a  leading  participator  in  the  events  it  records. 

Whatever  strengthens  the  community,  renovates  the 
press.  The  difficulty  with  the  daily  press  is  that  it  is 
not,  nor  can  it  well  be,  in  the  vanguard.  It  inevitably 
drops  into  the  rear,  where  the  masses  jostle  and  confuse 
one  another.  It  is  the  organ  of  public  opinion,  multi- 
tudinous, perplexed,  and  obscure.  While  a  portion  of 
the  press  will  be  the  chief  instrument  in  correcting  the 
press,  the  press  as  a  whole  is  so  at  one  with  our  lives 
that  it  can  only  share  and  hasten  events.  The  centres 
of  life  are  always  personal.  The  secrets  of  revelation 
are  with  a  few,  and  spread  thence  by  spiritual  propa- 
gation. 


PART  II. 

ECONOMICS  AS  A  FACTOR  IN  SOCIOLOGY. 


PART    II. 
ECONOMICS    AS   A   FACTOR    IN    SOCIOLOGY. 


CHAPTER  I. 

THE    NATURE    OP    ECONOMICS    AND   ITS    RELATION 
TO    SOCIOLOGY. 

§  1.  Economics  treats  of  values.  Value  is  purchasing 
power;  and  values  aggregated  in  the  hands  of  persons 
and  nations  are  wealth.  The  three  divisions  of  Econo- 
mics are  the  production,  the  distribution,  and  the  ex- 
change of  values.  The  consumption  of  wealth  is  its 
use,  and  pertains  to  social,  rather  than  to  economic, 
action.  It  may,  indeed,  affect  production,  and  so  may 
nearly  all  forms  of  social  activity. 

Production,  the  creation  of  values,  is  the  primary  pro- 
cess in  Economics,  measures  the  power,  the  prosperity  of 
a  community  as  expressed  in  sensuous  objects,  and  is 
most  intimately  associated  with  its  well-being.  Distri- 
bution, the  division  of  values  among  those  who  take  part 
in  their  production,  involves  the  principle  of  justice,  and 
still  more  directly  touches  the  general  welfare.  Produc- 
tion issues  in  commodities,  services,  and  credits.  Ex- 
change treats  of  the  ratios  values  bear  to  each  other  in 
the  transfer  of  these  three.  It  evei'ywhere  accompanies 
production   and   distribution,  and   disappears  only  with 

119 


120  ECONOMICS. 

the  extinction  of  values  in  consumption.  The  ease,  accu- 
racy, and  safety  of  exchange  turn  chiefly  on  money,  the 
medium  of  exchange,  and  in  any  community  go  far  to 
determine  the  point  which  has  been  reached  by  it  in 
civilization.  Exchange  is  so  omnipresent  a  process  in 
connection  with  values  that  some  have  defined  Econom- 
ics as  the  science  of  exchange.  Exchange  does  not, 
however,  determine  the  principles  either  of  production 
or  distribution. 

§  2.  Economics  is  chiefly  a  deductive  science,  con- 
firmed and  corrected  by  observation.  Its  phenomena  are 
mingled  with  other  social  phenomena,  acting  upon  them 
and  acted  on  by  them.  Its  conclusions  are  reached  by 
separating  in  consideration  certain  well-known  and  affili- 
ated causes  from  other  causes  associated  with  them,  and 
by  tracing  their  unobstructed  results.  The  conclusions 
thus  reached  may  have  great  value,  though  they  require, 
when  reintroduced  into  the  complex  field  of  human 
action,  to  be  supplemented  and  modified  by  the  causes 
which  have  been  omitted  in  the  discussion.  We  may  in 
Mechanics  trace  the  pressure  and  the  strain  involved 
in  the  various  parts  of  a  bridge  arising  from  the  form 
of  its  construction.  It  will  remain  for  us,  in  employ- 
ing these  conclusions  in  actual  work,  to  know  the 
nature  of  the  material  we  are  using  and  the  changes  it 
is  liable  to  undergo. 

An  example  of  the  deductive  character  of  Economics 
is  seen  in  the  law  of  rent.  This  is  derived  from  the 
familiar  and  obvious  facts  of  the  unequal  fertility  of 
land  and  its  differences  in  the  advantage  of  position. 
These  facts,  taken  in  connection  with  the  fundamental 
postulates  of  Economics,  give  us  the  law  of  rent.     We 


TWO   SCHOOLS.  121 

see  also  how  far  the  law,  applied  amid  the  obscure  and 
vexed  movements  of  society,  has  been  from  expressing 
the  rents  actually  paid  for  the  use  of  land. 

The  Duke  of  Argyle,  in  his  work  on  "  The  Unseen 
Foundations  of  Society,"  has  very  fully  pointed  out  the 
fact  that  the  so-called  law  of  rent  turns,  not  on  an  effi- 
cient cause,  but  on  a  concurrent  effect.  Rent  and  the 
cultivation  of  the  poorest  grade  of  soil  are  both  effects 
of  the  same  cause,  the  rise  of  value  in  produce. 

§  3.  In  consequence  of  these  two  facts,  a  science 
secured  by  neglecting  for  the  moment  the  causes  lying 
beyond  a  well-defined  circle,  and  the  complexity  of  soci- 
ety in  which  the  principles  so  obtained  are  to  be  used, 
there  has  arisen  a  diversity  of  opinion  as  to  the  value 
of  Economics.  One  school,  working  chiefly  within  the 
limits  of  the  science  itself,  and  impressed  with  the 
rigid  coherence  of  its  conclusions,  is  ready  to  set  up  its 
principles  as  ultimate  laws.  A  second  school,  occupied 
more  directly  with  the  phenomena  of  society  and  struck 
by  the  fact  that  these  alleged  laws  are  often  overridden 
by  the  conditions  which  enclose  them,  comes  to  think 
and  speak  disparagingly  of  Economics  as  a  distinct 
science,  and  to  direct  attention  primarily  to  Sociology. 
Here  alone  are  the  facts  in  their  entirety  with  which 
we  are  to  deal,  and  here,  if  anywhere,  we  must  learn  to 
handle  them.  "  Political  Economy,  when  it  disclaims 
the  correction  of  evidence,  is  a  crude  metaphysics,  which 
gives  a  very  artificial  and  erroneous  account  of  actual 
life."1 

The  truth  would  seem  to  be  that  while  we  are  quite 
right  in  simplifying  our  consideration  of  causes,  and  in 

l  "  Economic  Interpretation  of  History,  "  J.  E.  T.  Rogers,  p.  2. 


122  ECONOMICS. 

tracing  their  separate  action,  we  must  also,  in  the  use  of 
our  conclusions,  restore  in  each  instance  the  social  phe- 
nomena to  their  true  character.  Under  the  comparison 
already  employed,  we  must  build  our  bridges,  not  simply 
in  obedience  to  mechanical  laws,  but  with  most  direct 
regard  to  the  material  employed  and  the  service  ex- 
pected. 

§  4.  This  brings  us  to  the  relation  of  Economics  and 
Sociology.  In  Economics  we  treat  of  values  simply. 
We  treat  of  them  in  connection  with  those  primary  im- 
pulses which  give  rise  to  them.  In  Sociology  we  treat 
of  production,  distribution,  and  exchange  as  modifying 
society  and  modified  by  it,  as  playing  a  part  in  the  one 
whole  of  human  welfare. 

This  consideration  involves  two  things  :  the  modifi- 
cations put  upon  economic  laws  by  the  circumstances 
under  which  they  are  operative,  and  the  power  which 
these  laws  still  retain  under  the  more  comprehensive 
social  purposes  in  which  they  are  enclosed.  The  com- 
bining processes  of  Sociology  —  the  one  whole  of  our 
communal  life  —  must  be  understood  before  we  can  ade- 
quately understand  any  one  part  of  it.  Sociology  is 
to  Economics  —  and  to  all  other  social  sciences  —  what 
Physiology  is  to  an  extended  discussion  of  any  one 
system  of  the  human  body.  It  aims  to  give  us  the 
successful  results  in  health  when  all  these  systems 
mutually  limit  and  sustain  each  other. 

§  5.  We  offer  two  examples  of  this  interaction  of  eco- 
nomic laws  and  the  wider  interests  which  embrace  them, 
before  proceeding  to  state  and  estimate  the  postulates 
of  Political  Economy.  The  first  example  is  the  law  of 
rent.     Under  this  law  all   land  should  bear  rent  in  the 


BENT.  123 

measure  in  which  its  advantages  exceed  the  advantages 
of  land  barely  rewarding  the  labor  of  cultivation. 

This  law  plainly  indicates  a  simple  and  real  relation 
that  can  hardly  fail  to  be  felt.  If  men  were  at  any  time 
to  undertake  to  secure  a  rational  adjustment  of  rents, 
they  could  not  overlook  this  dependence,  or  rather  what 
is  associated  with  it. 

As  a  matter  of  fact,  however,  the  law  has  rarely 
found  definite  application.  Questions  of  rent  have  been 
and  are  among  the  more  perplexed  social  problems,  not 
because  of  any  complexity  in  the  law,  but  because  of  its 
ineffectiveness.  "  Every  civilized  community  in  Europe 
has  regulated  the  relation  of  landlord  and  tenant."  * 
This  regulation  has  been  the  result  chiefly  of  the  total 
failure  of  the  law  to  declare  itself  in  any  wholesome 
way.  It  has  been  the  rare  exception,  taking  human  his- 
tory collectively,  that  the  law  of  Iticardo  has  been  found 
governing  the  values  of  land.  It  is  the  deductive  force 
of  the  law,  not  its  historic  force,  that  impresses  the 
mind. 

Land,  in  its  forms  of  actual  ownership  and  use,  has 
been  so  deeply  involved  in  social  customs  that  the 
purely  economic  forces  have  only  now  and  then  been 
able  to  get  hold  of  it.  In  earlier  periods  land  has  been 
held  in  common,  and  the  law  did  not  apply.  In  later 
periods,  this  ownership  being  broken  up,  the  holding 
of  land  has  been  determined  by  the  relation  of  classes 
to  each  other,  and  has  expressed  the  complex  results 
of  social  forces.  War  has  had  more  to  do  in  settling 
the  relation  of  landlord  and  tenant  than  have  intrinsic 
values. 

l  "Economic  Interpretation  of  History,"  p.  175. 


124  ECONOMICS. 

Thus  in  England,  and  still  more  in  Ireland,  social  in- 
terests so  modify  this  dependence  as  to  make  of  it  a 
tangled  web  of  past  wrongs  and  existing  prejudices. 
One  might  as  well  expect  water,  filtering  through  a 
morass,  to  make  for  itself  a  straight  channel,  as  to  an- 
ticipate any  sufficient  action  of  this  law  in  old  historic 
communities. 

Two  points  illustrate  this  failure.  The  land  which 
yields  no  rent  is,  under  the  accepted  theory,  that  which 
simply  pays  the  cost  of  cultivation.  But  if  we  can  find 
this  land,  we  cannot  define  this  cost  of  cultivation  ex- 
cept in  terms  of  wages  associated  with  some  definite 
standard  of  living.  The  land  which  remunerates  the 
laborer  simply  enables  him  to  secure  the  current  enjoy- 
ments of  the  class  to  which  he  belongs.  If  the  standard 
of  living  has  sunk  to  bare  subsistence,  then  a  most  ex- 
travagant price  may,  as  in  Ireland,  be  paid  for  land, 
since  the  mere  existence  of  the  workman  is  all  that  is 
contemplated.  The  point  from  which  the  law  starts  is 
not  determined  by  the  law,  but  may  be  the  expression 
of  the  accumulated  misery  of  the  past.  When,  as  in 
Ireland,  land  is  repeatedly  sublet,  a  half-dozen  different 
standards  of  living  are  associated  with  the  land,  the 
lowest  making  no  appeal  to  our  sense  of  justice  or  hu- 
manity or  of  economic  fitness. 

The  law  brings  to  this  lowest  class  no  relief.  There  is 
no  elasticity  in  it.  There  is  no  favorable  fluctuation  of 
prices  by  which  they  can  profit,  no  resources  within 
themselves  by  means  of  which  they  can  negotiate  for 
better  terms.  The  index  has  been  forced  to  the  ex- 
treme limit  of  the  scale,  and  has  there  ceased  to  vibrate. 
The  entire  aggregate  of  previous  and  existing  social  re- 


LAW  OF  MALfHUS.  l2o 

lations  determine  the  standard  of  living,  and  if  that 
standard  leaves  the  laborer  no  reserve-power,  the  law 
of  rent  is  to  him  an  empty  symbol. 

Another  fact  indicating  the  actual  range  of  the  law 
is  the  renting  of  land  "at  the  halves."  Even  in  the 
United  States,  where  the  law  of  rent  has  more  power 
than  anywhere  else,  this  is  not  an  infrequent  custom. 
It  implies  a  complete  disregard  of  the  law  of  rent.  If 
the  returns  of  a  given  farm  were  twice  the  cost  of  the 
labor  of  cultivating  it,  the  owner,  under  this  arrange- 
ment, would  receive  the  entire  advantage  of  ownership, 
and  the  tiller  of  the  soil  the  simple  reward  of  his  labor. 
If  the  produce  of  the  farm  only  exceeded  by  a  trifle  the 
labor  expended  in  securing  it,  the  workman  would  be 
defrauded  of  a  large  share  of  his  toil.  If  the  reverse 
were  true,  and  the  yield  very  abundant,  the  landlord 
would  be  in  a  like  degree  the  loser.  That  such  a 
system,  —  or  the  very  general  metayer  system  of  Eu- 
rope—  with  so  negligent  an  adjustment  to  the  law, 
should  be  so  readily  accepted,  shows  how  sluggish  is 
the  action  of  economic  forces  in  this  field. 

§  6.  A  second  example  of  a  prominent  law  deduced 
with  much  certainty  from  familiar  facts  is  that  of  the 
increasingly  unfavorable  relation  of  population  to  pro- 
duce. Malthus  drew  attention  to  the  fact  that  popu- 
lation tends  to  increase  in  a  geometrical  ratio,  and 
produce  in  an  arithmetical  one ;  and  that  consumption, 
therefore,  is  constantly  gaining  ground  on  production. 
But  history  by  no  means  justifies  this  prognostication 
of  evil.  The  tendency  is  present,  but  sufficient  correc- 
tives within  and  beyond  Economics  are  also  present. 

Economics  draws  attention  to  points  of  relief  within 


126  ECONOMICS. 

the  science  itself,  yet  leaves  the  law  as  an  invincible 
menace  at  no  very  remote  period.  These  reductions  are 
land  still  unoccupied,  better  methods  of  cultivation,  and 
more  economy  in  use.  They  all  promise,  however,  only 
a  prolongation  of  the  struggle,  and  not  a  permanent 
victory.  The  real  significance  of  this  tendency  to  ex- 
cess cannot  be  fully  apprehended  without  a  much  wider 
survey  of  social  facts  than  that  offered  by  Economics. 

There  seems  to  be  a  biological  law  that  any  form  of 
life,  pressed  by  adverse  circumstances,  becomes  more 
prolific.  If  we  state  the  fact  on  the  reverse  side  it 
becomes,  life  well  nourished  and  restful  is  less  produc- 
tive. Periods  of  hardship  in  the  settlement  of  new 
countries  show  a  high-birth  rate,  and  periods  of  ease 
and  luxury  a  reduced  rate.1  A  physical  tendency  thus 
enters  to  correct  the  modern  increase  of  population, 
when  population  is  expanding  under  prosperity. 

This  law  is  strongly  supported  by  social  influences. 
Social  development  tends  to  high  standards  of  comfort, 
and  these  demand  prudence  and  restraint  in  marriage. 
General  Walker,  in  the  article  referred  to,  draws  atten- 
tion to  the  retardation  in  the  rate  of  increase  which  has 
attended,  in  the  United  States,  on  the  growth  of  exterior 
advantages.  The  census  of  Massachusetts  for  1885 
shows  the  much  more  rapid  increase  of  the  foreign,  than 
of  the  native,  population ;  the  former  not  having  come, 
in  anything  like  the  same  degree,  under  the  restraints 
of  prosperity.  Of  the  families  with  one  child  only, 
73  per  cent  were  native,  and  27  per  cent  foreign.  Of 
families  with  6  children,  47  per  cent  were  native,  and 
53  per  cent  foreign.     Of  families  with  12  children,  24 

1  F.  A.  Walker,  Forum,  vol.  xi.  p.  <;:>4. 


LAW  OF  MALT II US.  127 

per  cent  were  native,  and  76  per  cent  foreign.  Interme- 
diate numbers  corresponded  to  this  grade.  In  1888 
the  number  of  births  in  Massachusetts  in  each  one 
thousand  in  the  native  population  was  18.3  for  the  year, 
in  the  foreign  population  54.6.  The  figures  in  1890  were 
18.5-59.9.  The  census  of  Massachusetts  indicates  a  very- 
positive  retardation  in  the  growth  of  population  as  social 
development  makes  itself  felt.  Some  investigations  in 
Germany  have  led  to  the  conclusion  that  the  most 
vigorous  children  belong  in  connection  with  the  father 
to  the  period  between  30  and  40,  and,  in  connection  with 
the  mother,  to  the  period  between  30  and  35. 

In  the  social  motives  which  serve  to  limit  population, 
are  included  not  only  the  restraints  which  increased  per- 
sonal ambitions  and  responsibilities  impose,  but  also  the 
limitations  which  attend  on  squalor,  and  are  associated 
with  vice.  If  favorable  social  conditions  seem  to  pre- 
pare the  way  for  rapid  growth,  there  come  with  them  a 
new  set  of  motives  which  restore  the  equilibrium.  If 
the  movement  is  tainted  by  vice  and  restricted  by  pov- 
erty, these  too  work  in  the  same  direction,  both  on  the 
physical  and  on  the  moral  side.  A  large  birth-rate  is 
corrected  by  a  corresponding  death-rate,  and  the  lesson 
of  prudence  and  thrift  is  enforced  by  comfort  on  this 
side  and  destitution  on  that. 

If,  then,  we  take  those  countries  where  development 
has  been  most  continuous  and  complete,  we  find  not 
only  no  trace  of  the  alleged  disposition  of  population  to 
outstrip  the  food-supply,  but  the  reverse  rather.  Eng- 
land and  Wales  in  the  fourteenth  and  fifteenth  centuries, 
with  a  population  not  exceeding  two  and  one-half  mil- 
lions, were  less   prosperous  than  England  of  the  eigh- 


128  ECONOMICS. 

teenth  century,  with  more  than  double  that  number,  and 
far  less  well  fed  than  England  of  to-day,  with  a  popula- 
tion ten  times  greater.  England  has  a  larger  population 
than  ever  before,  and  one  steadily  increasing ;  but  she 
was  never  before  so  exempt  from  the  possibilities  of 
famine,  or  any  form  of  extreme  suffering.  There  is 
nothing  in  the  development  of  society  to  indicate  that 
there  is  any  line  of  limitation  in  these  safeguards  of 
growth. 

There  is  one  serious  drawback,  the  extreme  poverty 
of  a  limited  class.  That  poverty  is  not  due  to  any 
want  in  productive  power  in  the  world,  but  to  the  physi- 
cal and  social  degeneration  which  has  hitherto  accom- 
panied our  very  imperfect  and  partial  civilization.  It 
is  a  disaster  on  the  moral  and  voluntary  side  of  our 
lives,  and  not  in  the  physical  conditions  conceded  to  us. 

In  England  wiser  methods  have  decreased  pauperism 
with  a  growing  population,  and  in  Ireland  there  has  been, 
under  a  less  favorable  social  development,  a  growth  of 
pauperism,  with  a  decrease  of  population.  Social  forces, 
in  full  activity,  suffice  to  secure  increasing  prosperity  in 
the  teeth  of  every  alleged  economic  law. 

If  we  take  the  three  restraints  in  the  growth  of  popu- 
lation, disease,  famine,  and  war,  —  restraints  which  some 
have  been  willing  to  accept  as  the  necessary  checks  on 
population,  —  we  see  that  they  have  been  less  and  less 
operative  in  all  nations  under  a  progressive  civilization. 
Disease,  in  its  contagious  and  extensively  destructive 
forms,  has  been  in  a  high  degree  mastered;  famine, 
as  a  sweeping  scourge,  is  almost  impossible;  and  war, 
in  the  relative  number  of  its  victims,  has  been  much 
reduced.     War,  in  the  productive  energy  it  now  absorbs, 


LAW  OF  MALTHUS.  129 

probably  tends  to  render  the  ratio  of  population  to  pro- 
duction less  favorable,  not  more  favorable,  than  it  other- 
wise would  be.  The  destruction  it  occasions  to  life  does 
not  compensate  for  the  decrease  of  productive  power 
occasioned  by  it.  Those  slain  in  battle,  as  among  the 
most  able-bodied  in  the  community,  are  more  than  able 
to  support  themselves  and  their  offspring.  The  natural 
checks,  so-called,  of  population  are  thus  disappearing 
with  no  loss,  but  a  perpetual  gain,  in  strength. 

If,  therefore,  we  confront  the  Malthusian  law,  plainly 
as  it  is  deducible  from  certain  undeniable  facts,  with 
the  growth  of  society,  it  not  only  loses  its  menace,  but 
we  see  that  it  simply  pushes  us  toward  a  peaceful  and 
perpetual  readjustment  of  the  social  relations  under 
which  our  physical  and  our  rational  life  are  slowly  ris- 
ing to  a  more  perfect  equilibrium. 


130  ECONOMICS. 


CHAPTER  II. 
THE    POSTULATES    OF    ECONOMICS. 

§  1.  Having  said  sufficient  to  show  that  the  laws  of 
Economics  plainly  require,  in  their  use,  a  wise  adjust- 
ment to  social  facts  wider  than  themselves,  we  are 
ready  to  inquire  more  carefully  into  the  postulates 
which  underlie  Economics,  and  into  the  limitations 
inherent  in  them.1 

The  first  general  assumption  in  Political  Economy  is, 
in  the  order  of  thought :  All  men  in  the  pursuit  of  values 
desire  the  largest  returns  with  the  least  labor.  Deny 
this  assertion,  and  the  reasonings  of  Economics  would 
at  once  fall  to  pieces.  But  this  assertion  is  so  direct  an 
expression, of  instinctive  and  rational  action,  conforms  so 
completely  to  our  experience  among  men,  as  to  be  readily 
and  safely  accepted  as  a  universal  principle.  Indolence 
and  enterprise  alike  confirm  it.  Enterprise  enforces 
the  largeness  of  the  return,  indolence  the  lightness  of 
the  labor.  It  matters  not  to  what  mean,  or  to  what 
magnificent,  purposes  the  values  secured  by  labor  are  to 
be  devoted,  the  law  of  their  acquisition  remains  the 
same. 

It  is  also  a  postulate  most  fruitful  in  deductive  rea- 
soning. We  have  under  it  only  to  point  out  the  lines  of 
effort  most  productive,  and  immediately  they  become 
the  channels  into  which  capital  and  labor  are  carried  by 

i "  The  Postulates  of  English  Political  Economy,"  Walter  Bagehot. 


FIRST  POSTULATE.  131 

their  own  gravitation.  The  external  conditions,  saga- 
ciously interpreted,  make  plain  for  us  the  internal 
impulses. 

Yet  this  postulate,  general  and  controlling  as  it  is, 
and  well  fitted  to  give  a  distinct  character  to  a  large 
class  of  social  phenomena,  is  subject  to  many  limitations 
which  send  us,  in  its  use,  constantly  to  the  particular 
social  facts  we  may  have  in  hand.  This  postulate  vir- 
tually involves  complete  intelligence  among  men.  Men 
agree  in  desiring  the  largest  returns  with  the  least  labor, 
but  they  are  extensively  ignorant  of  what  these  returns 
and  this  labor  are.  The  law  operates  through  intellec- 
tual vision,  and  can  operate  with  promptness  and  pre- 
cision only  through  complete  vision.  It  does  not  suffice, 
therefore,  to  show,  in  any  given  case,  what  the  facts 
of  production  require  in  order  to  forecast  the  actions  of 
men  under  them.  We  are  still  involved  in  the  ever 
variable  and  insolvable  inquiry,  How  far  do  those  at 
any  one  time  and  place  engaged  in  production  under- 
stand these  conditions  ?  If  they  do  not  understand 
them,  it  is  so  far  as  if  these  conditions  did  not  exist. 
The  postulate,  therefore,  notwithstanding  its  broad  ap- 
plication, has  in  it  a  very  uncertain  ideal  element. 

Take  such  a  class  of  producers  as  farmers.  They  cer- 
tainly desire  the  largest  returns  with  the  least  labor, 
and  yet  we  find  in  their  efforts  unproductive  and  misap- 
plied labor  in  every  form  and  degree.  The  relation  of 
toil  to  return  is  very  partially  understood,  and  so  the 
postulate  is  baffled  in  every  conceivable  way. 

This  first  postulate  relies  on  indolence,  and  very 
safely.  The  laborer  is  not  to  be  willing  to  put  forth 
more  exertion  than  is  necessary  for  the  end  aimed  at. 


132  ECONOMICS. 

Another  element  enters  here,  that  of  time.  Men  desire 
the  largest  returns  with  the  least  labor,  but  they  also 
desire  them  in  the  shortest  time.  The  largest  returns 
and  the  shortest  time  are  often  not  consistent  with 
each  other.  The  largest  return  under  the  least  labor 
may  involve  a  longer  period  ;  a  lighter  return  under 
more  labor,  a  shorter  time.  Between  these  conflicting 
proffers  indolence  is  constantly  accepting  more  labor 
and  less  reward.  Laziness  overleaps  itself.  It  with- 
holds, as  the  end  of  effort  is  approached,  some  needed 
exertion  with  an  unfortunate  loss  in  productive  returns. 
The  laborer  is  very  often  too  lazy  —  not  simply  too  un- 
intelligent, but  too  lazy  —  for  the  postulate.  To-day  is 
always  winning  an  irrational  advantage  over  to-morrow. 
Less  returns  with  more  labor  are  constantly  accepted 
because  of  this  preponderance  of  immediate  pleasure  in 
contrast  with  future  welfare.  We  express  this  in  the 
proverbs :  "  The  longest  way  round  is  the  shortest  way 
home."  "The  fool  will  break  his  back  in  going  once 
rather  than  go  twice."  The  economic  temper  is  ac- 
quired, not  primitive,  and  is  acquired  in  very  different 
degrees. 

A  like  irrational  feeling  arresting  the  postulate  is 
the  overweening  confidence  men  have  in  what  they 
believe  to  be  their  good  luck.  Luck  does  not  mean 
with  them  chances  capable  of  exact  expression  and 
possessed  of  a  determinate  value.  It  means  an  obscure 
and  fanciful  factor  which  grows  as  the  imagination 
is  more  vivid  or  the  temperament  more  sanguine. 
Hence  a  strong  desire  to  speculate  finds  its  way  into 
economic  motives,  often  deranging  and  baffling  them. 
Conduct  ceases  to  rest  on  wise  calculations  and  adequate 


FIRST  POSTULATE.  133 

causes,  and  is  controlled  by  an  irrational  self-confidence. 
Men  are  only  in  a  measure  rational ;  and  when  reason 
swings  wildly,  like  a  magnetic  needle  in  a  magnetic 
storm,  the  postulates  of  Political  Economy  suffer  sus- 
pension. Commercial  transactions,  small  and  great, 
come  under  the  flaws,  squalls,  and  tempests  of  a  reck- 
less and  speculative  temper. 

There  are  many  other  feelings  operative  among  men 
aside  from  those  involved  in  the  postulate,  and  that  act 
in  modification  or  arrest  of  it.  Men  distrust  a  new 
method,  they  fear  a  new  undertaking,  they  are  averse 
to  coming  in  contact  with  new  persons  and  new  con- 
ditions. The  old  and  the  familiar  have  a  strong  hold 
upon  them.  Hence  they  do  not  respond  to  any  slight 
or  secondary  economic  forces.  Inertia  is  a  grave  ob- 
stacle to  action,  and  one  that  does  not  rest  on  reason. 
The  stone  that  lies  loose  on  the  field  soon  settles  into 
the  soil,  till  one  cannot  readily  turn  it  over.  The  oppo- 
site temper  of  excessive  volatility  also  interferes  with 
the  postulate.  The  postulate  calls  for  a  mind  delicately 
poised  on  its  own  centre,  and  thus  open  to  the  action 
called  for  by  self-interest. 

To  the  inertia  of  the  man  we  must  often  add 
the  inertia  of  the  community.  Customs  and  laws  do 
much  to  render  difficult,  or  prevent  altogether,  that 
easy  transfer  of  persons  from  place  to  place  and  occu- 
pation to  occupation,  which  is  involved  in  obedience 
to  the  postulate.  It  is  of  little  moment  what  men 
would  desire  if  there  are  no  suitable  social  conditions 
to  call  out  the  desire  and  make  it  effective.  The  cus- 
toms of  a  community  and  its  conventional  sentiment 
often  keep  latent  desires  that  might  work  great  changes 


134  ECONOMICS. 

if  they  were  once  awakened.  Law  often  adds  its  force 
to  custom,  and  economic  forces  are  kept  in  suspension 
by  a  non-conducting  social  medium.  In  long  periods 
and  over  large  areas  that  social  freedom  is  wanting 
which  is  the  essential  condition  of  responsive  action 
under  economic  motives.  Every  barrier  to  every  occu- 
pation, whether  arising  from  the  want  of  familiarity  or 
the  want  of  taste  or  the  want  of  skill,  or  from  social 
association  and  obstacles,  or  from  law,  serves  to  limit 
the  postulate.  Men  are  not  choosing,«in  the  wide  field 
of  intrinsic  possibilities,  but  in  the  narrow  one  assigned 
them  by  their  own  outlook.  These  limitations  are 
innumerable,  subtile,  changeable,  and  quite  beyond  any 
but  the   most  general  estimates. 

Moreover,  there  are  many  social  gains  which  are 
more  or  less  in  conflict  with  economic  ones.  The  con- 
fidence and  good-will  of  a  community  in  which  one  has 
labored,  its  friendships  and  attachments,  the  imme- 
diate loss  of  social  advantages  which  attends  on 
change  and  the  time  consumed  in  restoring  them,  the 
effects  on  one's  own  character  and  the  character  of  one's 
household,  offer  a  complex  and  powerful  set  of  motives 
in  modification  of  simply  industrial  interests.  These 
economic  forces  are  not  operative  in  a  field  all  their  own, 
but  in  one  occupied  by  a  great  variety  of  impulses. 

We  hear  constantly  of  the  timidity  of  capital ;  yet  it  is 
in  the  hands  of  the  more  intelligent  and  free  classes,  and 
in  its  use  is  far  more  separate  from  conflicting  motives 
than  is  labor.  It  is  not  actual  economic  facts  which 
rule  the  money-market,  but  men's  knowledge  of  them 
and  feelings  about  them ;  and  these  are  rarely  accurate, 
and  are  often  very  wide  of  the  mark. 


FIRST  POSTULATE.  135 

§  2.  It  follows,  then,  that  this  apparent  generality  of 
the  first  postulate  is  in  a  high  degree  illusory.  It  may 
be  present,  as  a  ruling  principle,  in  every  degree  of 
strength  and  weakness.  As  it  presupposes,  in  its  perfect 
prevalence,  complete  intelligence,  it  can  rule  a  commu- 
nity only  as  those  wakeful,  shrewd  insights  are  present 
which  characterize  commerce.  Prosperous  periods  and 
prosperous  classes  are  active  under  the  law.  Clamor 
and  complaint  are  favorable  indices.  They  show  that 
vigorous  thought  and  aggressive  temper  which  are  the 
expression  of  the  thrifty,  ambitious  people.  The  weak 
and  the  ignorant,  on  the  other  hand,  submit  in  a  hope- 
less and  stolid  fashion  to  adverse  influences.  They  have 
no  strong  desires  and  no  clear  methods,  and  the  law  gets 
little  hold  upon  them.  Wages  yield  quickly  under  ad- 
verse forces,  and  rise  slowly  under  favoring  ones.  The 
manager,  under  the  prospect  of  low  prices,  shortens  in 
production  and  reduces  wages.  The  blow  falls  on  the 
laborer.  He  has  little  anticipation  and  no  remedy.  The 
absence  of  the  power  of  resistance  discourages  forecast. 
The  workman  is  often  ruled  by  conditions  so  much  be- 
yond his  own  power  of  control  as  to  leave  the  postulate 
in  a  state  of  suspension.  So  far  as  he  is  excluded,  from 
management,  he  is  shut  off  from  that  active  frame  of 
mind  which  undertakes  to  control  events. 

There  is  almost  always  in  the  labor-market  a  residuum 
of  unsold  labor  —  a  few  doing  nothing  and  many  more 
doing  less  than  they  would  be  glad  to  do.  This  unsalable 
labor  may  amount,  in  hard  times  in  the  United  States,  to 
the  services  of  a  million  of  men.  "When  production  is 
sluggish  this  residuum  increases,  with  slight  reduction  of 
nominal  wages,  but  with  a  heavy  reduction  in  the  results 


136  ECONOMICS. 

of  a  year's  toil.  When  prosperity  returns,  this  labor 
must  all  be  reabsorbed  before  the  price  of  labor  will  rise. 
Hence,  again,  it  happens  that  forecast  and  prudence  are 
particularly  slow  of  operation  among  workmen.  Causes 
reach  him  in  too  roundabout,  obscure,  and  uncontrollable 
a  way.  He  becomes  indisposed  by  habit  of  mind  to  any 
strenuous  effort  to  master  industrial  conditions.  When 
a  chance  of  improvement  comes,  he  is  poorly  prepared 
to  secure  it ;  the  movement  of  his  thoughts  is  too  slow 
or  too  uncertain  to  seize  it. 

Thus  a  temper  prevails  among  workmen  inattentive  to 
the  possible  gains  of  labor.  In  Germany  wages  change 
in  short  distances  one  hundred  per  cent;  and  in  our  own 
country  the  difference  in  wages  in  leading  lines  of  pro- 
duction in  places  not  remote  is  very  considerable.1  These 
variations  are  so  concealed  by  distance,  or  associated 
with  such  difficulties  of  transfer,  or  united  with  so  many 
other  conflicting  motives,  as  to  be  inoperative  on  an 
economic  basis. 

A  further  result  among  workmen  is  that  the  weak  and 
improvident,  as  opposed  to  the  thrifty  and  strong,  tend 
to  control  prices.  They  stand  ready  to  anticipate  any 
rise  of  wages  and  to  prevent  it ;  they  feel  the  first  decline 
in  wages  and  precipitate  it.  In  capital,  weak  producers 
help  to  give  those  high  prices  under  which  superior  enter- 
prise thrives ;  in  labor,  the  lowest  class  help  to  maintain 
those  low  prices  which  the  industrious  can  only  partially 
correct.  Moreover,  a  day's  labor  passes  as  if  it  were  one 
and  the  same  thing,  in  a  single  department,  with  every 

1  The  wages  paid  at  Braddock,  Pa.,  have  heen  quoted:  keeper, 
$2.23;  helper,  $1-70;  and  at  the  same  time  at  Chicago,  keeper,  $3.25; 
helper,  ;$2.(J0. 


FIRST  POSTULATE.  1-37 

other  day's  labor.  There  is  no  exact  or  just  discrimina- 
tion at  this  point,  and  hence  the  poorer  forms  of  labor 
have  a  power  to  pull  down  prices  which  does  not  properly 
belong  to  them.  These  wide  communal  relations  in  labor 
often  extend  themselves  till  they  weave  a  web  of  eco- 
nomic conditions  around  the  single  workman  which  he 
cannot  break  through.  It  becomes  a  mere  mockery  to 
remand  him  to  general  principles  which  are  not  in  oper- 
ation, to  postulates  of  production  which  are  buried  out 
of  reach  under  an  avalanche  of  social  evils.  It  is  these 
relations  which  make  a  sweating  process  possible,  and 
which  allows  it  to  enter  into  the  lower  forms  of  industry 
in  so  many  degrees.  Looked  at  as  a  tendency,  it  is  not 
present  merely  in  the  few  extreme  forms  that  we  have 
come  to  designate  by  the  word,  but  it  is  a  universal 
menace,  the  triumph  of  hard  social  conditions  over  per- 
sonal enterprise.  The  industrious  workman  may  easily 
be  called  on  to  contend  with  obstacles  quite  beyond  his 
strength,  obstacles  that  slowly  extinguish  the  productive 
disposition  in  his  own  breast. 

This  first  postulate  calls  for  a  high  degree  of  intelli- 
gence, calls  for  a  quick  submission  of  the  man  himself 
to  this  intelligence,  for  social  conditions  which  leave  it 
free  to  operate,  for  a  temper  among  workmen  which 
incline  them  to  sustain  in  each  other  the  successive 
steps  of  advancement.  But  these  antecedent  conditions 
are  all  wanting  in  one  degree  or  another  everywhere. 

Economics  thus  gives  us  the  law  of  a  fluid,  while 
society  is  full  of  adhesive  and  gelatinous  parts.  "We 
can  do  nothing  safely  in  social  construction  with  the 
theory  alone.  "We  can  use  it  successfully  only  in  con- 
nection with  a  diligent  inquiry  into  the  circumstances 


138  ECONOMICS. 

under  which  it  is  to  be  applied.  This  is  a  part  of  the 
province  of  Sociology,  to  present  in  a  large  way  the 
limitations  under  which  economic  forces  take  effect,  and 
those  farther  social  forces  which  operate  in  modification 
of  them. 

§  3.  The  second  subordinate  postulate  of  Political 
Economy  is  :  Every  man  is  the  proper  person  to  order 
his  own  affairs.  The  impelling  powers  of  the  first 
postulate,  to  wit,  desires,  are  his ;  the  restraining  ten- 
dency, to  wit,  indolence,  is  also  his.  These  primary 
forces  can  only  become  operative  through  the  freedom 
of  the  person  who  entertains  them.  It  is  the  scope  of 
the  science,  the  very  work  it  assigns  itself,  to  trace 
these  impulses  in  their  operation  among  men.  The 
effort  is  a  wise  one ;  but  society,  as  an  organized  whole, 
does  not  leave  men  as  so  many  individuals  to  act  on 
each  other  in  this  independent  way. 

Economics,  as  the  science  of  values,  discusses  the  con- 
ditions of  production  which  secure  the  largest  aggregate 
result.  It  is  not  dealing  with  transactions  in  a  formal 
way,  but  in  a  forceful  way.  When  it  assumes  that  the 
several  parties  to  a  trade  are  each  looking  to  his  own 
interests,  the  objects  of  the  science  are  not  reached 
unless  this  watchfulness  is  real  and  adequate.  There 
must  be  present  the  intelligence  and  the  power  which 
truly  set  free  economic  forces.  The  terms  of  an  eco- 
nomic transaction  are  not  found  in  appearances,  but  in 
facts. 

But  men  frequently  lack  the  intelligence  that  makes 
them  masters  of  the  situation,  or  are  so  unequal  in  in- 
telligence as  to  shift  the  pivot  of  revolution  quite  from 
its  true  position.      A  forecast  of  results,  the  very  first 


SECOND   POSTULATE.  139 

of  economic  faculties,  is  a  form  of  power  very  unequally 
distributed  among  men ;  and  it  is  impossible,  therefore, 
in  many  transactions  between  class  and  class,  to  assume 
it  as  a  real  and  sufficient  foundation  for  current  rela- 
tions. 

The  parties  to  a  trade  are  also  often  in  different  cir- 
cumstances of  stress  in  reference  to  the  adjustment. 
There  is  no  antecedent  equilibrium  in  the  forces  impel- 
ling the  bargain.  The  one  must  buy  or  sell,  or  suffer 
great  loss  ;  the  other  may  buy  or  sell  as  suits  his  pleas- 
ure. "VVe  might  as  well  call  it  a  fair  typical  battle 
when  one  of  two  contestants  has  the  sun  in  his  eyes,  or 
is  on  the  lower  side  of  an  incline,  as  to  insist  that  a 
given  trade  —  we  will  say  between  tenant  and  landlord 
■ — lies  fully  within  the  scope  of  economic  forces,  merely 
because  it  takes  on  the  form  of  barter.  We  are  not 
dealing  with  words,  but  with  things. 

These  inequalities  of  vantage  ■ —  in  themselves  fre- 
quently very  great  —  may  also  be  enhanced  by  the 
state.  The  strength  of  the  strong  is  accumulated  in  a 
gigantic  corporation,  itself  insensible  to  human  ills,  and 
with  no  organ  of  sympathy  with  which  to  feel  the  ills 
of  others.  The  state,  having  thus  helped  to  shift  the 
fulcrum  in  one  direction,  may  well  be  asked  to  do  what 
it  can  to  restore  the  balance  of  power  it  has  aided  in 
deranging.  If  a  railroad  is  given  a  valuable  public 
franchise,  and  is  further  to  be  protected  in  the  perform- 
ance of  its  duties  by  conceding  it  especial  claims  on 
its  employees,  then,  certainly,  the  employees  are  not  to 
be  left  in  the  settlement  of  wages  to  the  possibilities 
of  trade  under  the  misleading  plea  that  economic  laws 
are  freely  operative  and  will  fully  protect  them.     If  the 


140  ECONOMICS. 

civil  law  puts  itself  on  this  side,  it  must  put  itself  on 
that  side  as  well. 

Hence,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  the  state  has  found  it 
wise  repeatedly  to  intervene  between  parties  to  a  formal 
or  implied  contract  to  protect  both  the  weak  and  the 
strong  when  their  own  watchfulness  could  not  be  read- 
ily exercised.  The  laws  which  concern  the  labor  of 
children  or  of  women,  which  pertain  to  the  hours  of 
labor  and  the  safety  of  labor,  or  to  the  safety  of  travel 
by  steamship  or  rail-car ;  all  laws  which  give  the  work- 
men special  liens,  which  intervene  in  the  interpretation 
of  contracts,  or  release  by  bankruptcy  the  claims  of 
contracts  —  are  in  modification  of  economic  forces,  sup- 
plementing them,  or  putting  upon  them  the  restraints 
of  superior  social  interests.  As  a  matter  of  fact,  then, 
civil  law  does  not  and  cannot  accept  the  second  axiom 
in  an  unqualified  way,  it  is  so  manifestly  inadequate  as 
a  social  principle. 

We  will  mention  here  —  waiting  till  we  have  reached 
Ethics  to  amplify  the  point  —  that  a  most  important 
office  of  the  moral  law  takes  effect  in  conceding  fairer 
conditions  to  trade  than  those  at  the  moment  current, 
and  in  supplementing  the  issues  of  trade  with  the 
higher  issues  of  human  fellowship.  We  cannot  possi- 
bly deal  successfully  with  the  complex  social  facts  of 
commerce  under  economic  laws  alone.  We  must  con- 
cede the  presence,  and  evoke  the  presence,  of  modifying 
civic  and  ethical  principles. 

§  4.  The  third  postulate  of  Economics  is  :  Freedom 
of  exchange  suffices  rightly  to  determine,  and  should  be 
left  to  determine,  prices.  This  principle  follows  imme- 
diately from  the  other  two.     It  simply  affirms  the  con- 


Til  11! J)    POSTULATE.  141 

ditions  under  which  they  take  effect.  It  asserts  the 
freedom  which  must  fall  to  every  man  in  seeking  his 
own,  in  fulfilling  his  own  impulses.  If  these  are  native 
and  legitimate  impulses,  they  carry  with  them  freedom, 
the  right  of  gratification. 

The  three  together,  to  wit,  impulses,  in  a  personal 
form,  bidding  against  each  other,  give  us  the  fundamen- 
tal law  of  Political  Economy,  that  of  competition. 
Competition  is  to  Economics  what  gravitation  is  to 
Physics,  an  inseparable  term  in  every  problem.  Com- 
petition gathers  together  and  puts  in  an  active  form 
productive  forces.  Yet,  as  at  the  same  time  the  appar- 
ent source  of  much  evil  in  society,  it  demands  the  most 
thorough  consideration.  We  open  the  discussion  by  a 
few  examples  of  the  economic  problems  that  receive 
their  current  relations  under  this  law. 

The  first  case  Ave  adduce,  and  one  favorable  to  the 
rigid  application  of  general  principles,  is  that  of  free 
trade.  The  free-trader,  confident  of  the  beneficent  scope 
of  trade  and  of  the  invincible  character  of  the  forces 
which  underlie  it,  has  at  times  given  his  argument  a 
more  absolute  statement  and  imperious  tone  than  belong 
to  it.  The  impulses  which  promote  production  and  com- 
merce are  not  so  complete  and  independent  as  to  call, 
in  no  case,  for  collective  guidance.  The  protectionist  is 
not  wrong  in  supposing  that  direct  endeavor  may  inter- 
vene, here  as  elsewhere,  between  the  desire  and  the  end 
in  view,  defining  the  means  fitted  to  secure  it.  We  may 
prepare  the  way  for  a  wider  and  more  profitable  com- 
merce by  varying  and  strengthening  our  productive 
resources  within  themselves. 

The    state,    moreover,    may  have    its    own    interests, 


142  E(  GNOMICS. 

expressea  in  independence  and  self-contained  power, 
expressed  in  revenue  and  in  police,  which  may  impose 
more  or  less  restraint  upon  trade.  The  problem  is  not 
one  purely  of  Economics.  Social  reasons  make  for  and 
against  commerce.  AVe  may  admit  the  full  force  of  the 
natural  laws  which  issue  in  it,  and  still  wish  to  antici- 
pate or  limit  their  action  here  and  there. 

The  arguments  which  make  most  decisively  against 
protection  are  derived  from  social  experience,  from  the 
universal  fact  that  the  theory  of  protection,  once  taken 
on,  almost  immediately  loses  its  economic  justifications, 
and  resolves  itself  into  an  unhesitating,  unscrupulous 
struggle  between  man  and  man,  class  and  class,  to  se- 
cure a  legal  advantage  in  production.  The  theory  abso- 
lutely and  ignominiously  breaks  down  because  of  the 
mischievous  social  forces  it  lets  loose.  The  doctrines  of 
free  trade  and  of  protection  raise  wide  social  questions, 
which  must  be  answered  collectively,  if  we  are  to  dis- 
cover the  prudent  and  safe  lines  of  policy. 

The  wage-fund,  as  an  irresistible  factor  in  wages,  is 
a  second  example.  It  has  been  held  that  in  any  one 
productive  community,  at  any  one  time,  there  is  a  cer- 
tain amount  of  capital  which  is  ready,  in  the  coming  in- 
dustrial cycle,  to  be  expended  as  wages  ;  that  there  is 
also  a  certain  number  of  laborers  waiting  to  perform  the 
labor  called  for ;  and  that  the  ratio  of  these  two  amounts 
to  each  other  must  define  wages.  To  fret  against  this 
result  is  to  fret  against  a  sum  in  simple  division.  Our 
philanthropy  wrestles  with  natural  forces  which  are  sure 
to  overthrow  it.  It  creates  new  eyils  of  its  own  in 
striving  blindly  to  correct  old  ones. 

The  difficulty  is  not  that  there  is  no  truth  in  the  wage- 


WAGE-FUND.  143 

fund  theory,  but  that  that  truth  is  not  of  the  absolute 
character  assigned  it.  JThe  facts  are  more  concessive 
than  our  interpretation  of  them.  The  practical  differ- 
ence between  the  two  is  as  great  as  it  is  in  mechanism 
between  bearings  which  have  no  elasticity  and  bearings 
with  an  elastic  bed.  Our  jolting  wagon  becomes  an  en- 
joyable carriage  by  means  of  springs. 

The  wage-fund  may  at  any  moment  be  enlarged  or 
diminished  by  trust  or  distrust,  good-will  or  ill-wilL 
Workmen  may  render  more  remunerative  or  less  remu- 
nerative services,  may  facilitate  or  embarrass  the  pro- 
ductive process.  This  process,  thoroughly  successful 
and  resting  on  confidence,  may  anticipate  its  own  re- 
turns, and  relieve,  in  its  own  progress,  the  want  of  capi- 
tal. Workmen  receiving  better  wages  may  feel  the 
impulse  to  economy,  and  return  to  capital  a  portion  of 
their  hire.  They  may  also,  by  enlarged  consumption, 
maintain  the  price  of  products.  Prosperity  is  the  fertile 
soil  of  prosperity.  The  vitality  of  the  productive  pro- 
cess is  expressed  in  the  degree  in  which  it  acts  and  re- 
acts on  itself,  and  sustains  its  own  strength,  capital 
putting  courage  into  workmen,  and  workmen  returning 
a  loyal  temper  to  capital ;  wages  widening  purchasing 
power,  and  purchasing  power,  as  effective  demand,  in- 
creasing production  and  nourishing  wages.  The  eco- 
nomic temper,  the  social  and  moral  tone  of  a  community 
as  one  organic  whole,  are  more  potent,  in  any  consider- 
able period,  to  determine  the  wage-fund  than  is  the 
wage-fund  to  determine  them.  The  action  and  reaction 
between  the  two  is  a  vital  one,  and  must  be  so  estimated 
and  studied.  In  these  comprehensive  social  conditions, 
the  wage-fund  ceases  to  have  a  fixed  numerical  value,  or 
to  carry  with  it  inescapable  results. 


144  ECONOMICS. 

One  more  example  will  suffice.  Many  combinations 
have  arisen,  as  one  or  another  form  of  trusts,  in  restric- 
tion of  competition.  It  has  been  asserted  by  those  who 
have  complete  confidence  in  the  adequacy  of  economic 
laws  to  correct  miscarriage,  that  these  trusts  should 
give  rise  to  no  alarm  and  call  for  no  special  treatment. 
When  the  profits  arising  from  combination  become  ex- 
cessive, it  will  be  impossible,  it  is  said,  to  prevent  those 
not  included  in  them  from  attacking  them  in  the  old 
competitive  Avay. 

This  reasoning  seems  to  be  but  a  stultifying  logic  to 
those  who  regard  economic  forces  as  acting  with  other 
forces  quite  able  to  suspend  and  pervert  them.  There 
would  be  no  motive  for  the  combination,  if  the  combina- 
tion were  sure  to  fail  as  it  approached  success.  If  the 
law  of  competition  is  as  adequate  as  it  is  thought  to  be, 
it  ought  to  anticipate  and  prevent  the  combination.  If 
it  is  unable  to  prevent  it,  it  may  be  equally  unable  to 
correct  it.  The  bad  conditions  which  arise  in  spite  of 
the  law  may  sustain  themselves  in  spite  of  the  law. 
Even  if  we  were  sure  that  competition  would  avail  in 
the  end  to  break  down  trusts,  its  impotency  in  the  inter- 
vening period,  the  losses  and  the  unjust  gains,  would 
still  remain,  and  would  call  for  all  the  relief  that  we 
could  bring  to  them.  There  is  certainly  no  sufficient 
reason  why  we  may  not  restrain  a  voluntary  interfer- 
ence with  economic  action  by  voluntary  action,  or  bring 
correction  to  that  which  needs  correction.  The  river 
may  strive  to  relieve  itself  of  snags ;  is  the  snag  there- 
fore not  open  to  the  attacks  of  the  engineer  ?  A  nation 
may  line  its  frontier  with  fortresses ;  is  the  menace  al- 
tered by  the  fact  that,  in  the  event  of  war,  they  may  all 


NATURE   OF  COMPETITION.  145 

possibly  be  taken  ?  A  trust  is  a  fortified  position,  and 
can  be  captured  only  by  a  hard  struggle.  Wherever  it 
exists,  and  as  long  as  it  exists,  it  is  a  trespass  on  com- 
merce. 

§  5.  If,  then,  we  cannot  accept  the  entire  adequacy 
of  economic  principles,  more  especially  of  competition, 
to  watch  over  the  public  welfare,  it  becomes  necessary 
to  understand  the  functions  it  subserves,  and  the  limita- 
tions of  those  functions. 

An  open  market  is  the  presupposition  of  competition. 
Competition,  as  a  wholesome  law,  means  no  more  than 
the  adjustment  of  the  terms  of  production  and  of  ex- 
change to  each  other  over  a  certain  area,  so  that  each 
shall  have  the  advantage  and  render  the  service  that, 
from  the  nature  of  the  case,  belong  to  it.  Competition 
does  not  create  the  productive  forces,  but  assigns  their 
relation  in  reference  to  each  other.  The  accidents  of 
trade  and  the  tricks  of  trade  and  the  combinations  of 
trade,  which  prevent  a  genuine  expression  of  the  facts 
involved,  constitute  no  part  of  competition  as  an  eco- 
nomic law,  any  more  than  a  lie  is  a  constituent  of  the  nar- 
rative in  which  it  is  embodied.  An  ideal  market  would 
bring  a  just  comparison  of  all  the  productive  powers  in- 
cluded in  a  given  area,  and  bearing  on  a  particular  com- 
modity. All  that  conceals  these  productive  forces,  or 
anticipates  their  action,  excludes  competition,  and  is  not 
a  part  of  it.  A  productive  territory  fully  represented, 
is  the  essential  notion  of  a  market.  Any  limitation  is 
so  far  a  loss  of  a  market.  If  bad  weather  prevents  the 
usual  attendance  in  the  public  square  of  a  city  of  those 
who  supply  it  with  vegetables,  the  market,  to  that 
degree,  fails.     Economic  forces  are  in  suspension.     The 


146  ECONOMICS. 

law  of  competition  may  still  govern  the  sales  actually 
made,  suiting  itself  to  a  narrow  supply  ;  but  it  is  not 
that  satisfactory  force  which,  resting  back  on  all  the 
forces  involved,  reconciles  them  with  one  another.  It 
simply  gives  immediate  expression  to  unfortunate  cir- 
cumstances, and  does  nothing  to  correct  them. 

If  bad  roads  render  this  light  attendance  frequent, 
the  economic  forces  involved  are  correspondingly  strait- 
ened. Competition  alone  does  not  suffice  to  cure  the 
evil.  The  broader  conditions  of  civilization  which  en- 
close it  are  at  fault,  and  demand  correction.  As  a 
matter  of  fact,  there  are  comparatively  few  complete 
markets.  Markets  are  limited  in  a  great  variety  of 
ways,  and  it  happens  but  rarely  that  all  the  production 
which,  in  any  one  commodity  or  in  any  given  area,  in 
any  one  period  or  in  any  single  place,  should  be  repre- 
sented in  the  comparison  which  determines  prices,  is 
represented.  We  are  constantly,  therefore,  giving  an 
ideal  completeness  to  the  law  of  competition  which  does 
not  belong  to  it.  It  would  possess  this  perfection  only 
if  the  way  had  been  perfectly  prepared  for  it.  If  we 
wish  competition  to  become  an  adequate  and  beneficent 
force,  we  must  intermeddle  with  it;  we  must  provide 
the  suitable  conditions  under  which  it  takes  full  effect. 
It  does  not  provide  its  own  terms,  but  acts  under  the 
terms,  fortunate  or  unfortunate,  which  chance  to  be 
present.  A  market  rarely  gathers  in,  with  certainty 
and  decision,  the  productive  forces  subject  to  it,  and 
rarely,  therefore,  secures  that  full  comparison  on  which 
competition,  as  an  economic  law,  rests.  The  enlarge- 
ments and  corrections  which  make  way  for  true  com- 
petition are  not  here  nor  there,  but  everywhere. 


OPEN  MARKET.  147 

Not  only  is  any  given  market  seldom  adequate,  it  is 
seldom  open.  By  an  open  market  we  understand  one 
that  gives  free  admission  to  all  economic  forces,  and 
excludes  all  others.  Deception  and  restriction  of  all 
sorts  set  aside  considerations  which  should  guide  pur- 
chase and  sale,  or  introduce  considerations  which  are 
not  pertinent  to  them.  The  open  market  discloses  the 
facts  in  the  case,  and  leaves  the  adjustment  of  prices 
to  them.  Competition  which  conceals  or  distorts  the 
facts  is  no  more  a  law  of  production  than  are  theft  and 
violence.  We  need  not  say  how  ideal  is  this  conception 
of  an  open  market ;  how  many  influences,  designedly 
and  undesignedly,  steal  into  a  market  and  deflect  prices 
in  one  way  or  another  from  their  true  expression.  The 
productive  forces  which  Economics  discusses,  and  which 
are  properly  the  exclusive  terms  involved  in  competi- 
tion, are  frequently  quite  overborne  by  other  influences 
wholly  foreign  to  them. 

Under  the  supposition  of  a  complete  response  of 
prices  to  the  ruling  causes  at  any  one  time  present,  we 
have  the  assertion  that  there  can  be  but  one  price  in 
the  same  market  at  the  same  time.  This  is  far  from 
being  true.  Its  truth  would  imply  complete  knowledge 
in  any  given  market  of  all  the  conditions  operative,  that 
this  knowledge  was  shared  in  common  by  every  pur- 
chaser and  seller,  and  that  it  was  in  no  way  disturbed 
either  by  a  sanguine  or  a  depressed  temper.  It  would 
also  imply  that  commodities  of  the  same  kind  should 
not  differ  from  one  another  in  quality  in  any  obscure 
way,  or  appeal  to  any  eccentric  taste  or  disturbing  no- 
tions in  men.  These  suppositions  in  no  way  conform  to 
the  facts  of  most  markets.     The  controlling  causes  are 


148  ECONOMICS. 

oftentimes  estimated  with  great  inaccuracy ;  those  busy 
in  the  market  have  not  the  same  knowledge  of  them, 
nor  of  what  others  may  be  doing,  at  any  given  moment, 
to  modify  them  ;  commodities  are  separated  from  one  an- 
other by  very  obscure  differences;  and  many  fanciful  and 
freakish  impulses  intervene  to  modify  results.  Hence, 
in  most  markets  there  are  many  prices.  A  good  buyer 
is  one  who  understands  this  fact,  and  skilfully  accom- 
modates himself  to  it.  The  women  who  spend  their 
mornings  in  shopping  would  regard  it  as  a  most  stupid 
assertion  that  there  is  "  but  one  price  for  a  commod- 
ity" at  one  time.1 

The  gist  of  this  discussion  is  that  when  we  are  dealing 
with  competition,  as  it  offers  itself  in  the  commercial 
world,  we  easily  lose  sight  of  that  careful  comparison  of 
productive  powers  contemplated  in  Economics,  under  the 
law  of  competition,  and  put  in  its  place  a  variable,  and 
oftentimes  objectionable,  form  of  social  activity,  pur- 
suing a  dubious  way  toward  desirable  results.  We  are 
misled  by  the  agreement  of  words  into  supposing  that 
the  competition  of  trade,  with  all  its  unfair  and  decep- 
tive methods,  is  the  competition  of  Economics,  resting 
directly  on  the  facts  in  the  case. 

§  6.  What  services  are  they  which  we  look  to  com- 
petition to  perform  ?  These  services  are  of  much  mo- 
ment, and  we  know  not  how  to  dispense  with  them. 
The  first  of  them  is  the  determination  of  prices.  By 
this  determination  of  prices  it  regulates,  in  the  second 
place,  the  amount  of  production.  In  the  third  place,  by 
the  same  means  it  adapts  production  to  the  wants  of 
men,  and,  in  the  fourth  place,  improves  it  in  quality. 

1  "Political  Economy,"  F.  A.  Walker,  p.  95. 


FUNCTIONS   OF  COMPETITION.  149 

The  ruling  impulse,  in  each  of  these  services,  is  awak- 
ened and  sustained  by  competition,  but  no  one  of  them 
is  perfectly  performed.  They  are,  one  and  all,  rendered 
with  serious  abatements. 

Competition  determines  prices.  How  can  the  possi- 
bilities of  production,  varying  with  physical  circum- 
stances, varying  with  personal  endowments,  measure 
themselves  against  themselves,  otherwise  than  by  that 
comparison  involved  in  competition  ?  "We  cannot  ad- 
vantageously sustain  men  in  any  given  form  of  produc- 
tion without  reference  to  their  grade  of  powers  ;  we 
cannot  determine  what  that  grade  is  otherwise  than  by 
the  strife  of  trade  which  defines  it.  We  wish  the  most 
skilful  production,  Ave  wish  the  low  prices  incident  to 
it,  and  these  we  secure  by  the  sifting  processes  of  an 
active  market.  Yet  this  regulation  is  not  perfect. 
There  are  most  undesirable  and  extreme  fluctuations  in 
prices,  and  adventitious  forces  find  their  way  freely 
into  them.  The  work  is  done ;  not  perfectly,  but  wre  do 
not  as  yet  see  how  it  can  be  better  done. 

The  rise  and  fall  of  prices  determine  the  activity  we 
can  wisely  direct  to  each  branch  of  business.  The  auto- 
matic mechanism  which  apportions  human  effort  among 
the  innumerable  forms  of  production  is  set  in  motion  by 
competition.  Here  again  we  make  bad  mistakes,  and 
suffer  the  evils  of  over-production  ;  but  we  can  conceive 
of  no  oversight  which  would  take  the  place  of  the 
eager,  interested,  universal  watchfulness  called  out  by 
competition.  The  man  who  makes  a  mistake  is  imme- 
diately punished,  and  he  who  is  alert  and  astute  is 
as  quickly  rewarded. 

The  most  extended  example  of  over-production  is  that 


150  ECONOMICS. 

of  machine  products.1  Our  suddenly  acquired  and  tre- 
mendous powers  in  this  direction  have  run  aAvay  with 
us,  and  our  dangerous  over-production  has  been  brought 
home  to  us  by  crushing  forms  of  competition.  This  fact 
discloses,  as  we  shall  see,  some  limitations  to  which  this 
economic  law  is  subject,  but  does  not  show  that  there 
is  any  other  safer  path  which  we  can  pursue. 

Competition  is  also  constantly  operative  in  adapting 
commodities  to  the  wants  and  tastes  of  men.  The  in- 
creasing suitableness  of  products  is  one  of  the  conspicu- 
ous gains  of  civilization,  and  it  is  due  almost  wholly  to 
that  eager  competition  which  is  on  the  alert  to  discover 
and  call  out  a  new  demand.  This  impulse  has  also  its 
evil  side.  Desires  are  evoked  in  a  mischievous,  as  well 
as  in  a  desirable,  form,  and  trade,  seeking  immediate 
profit,  proceeds  in  oversight  of  greater  ultimate  good. 
Yet  the  more  substantial  gains  are  usually  found  with 
the  more  sound  and  comprehensive  purposes. 

Akin  to  this  improvement  in  kind  is  the  improvement 
in  the  quality  of  goods.  Great  successes  are  often 
achieved  in  this  direction.  The  enterprise  that  shows 
itself  in  superior  quality  of  production  unites  at  once 
personal  and  general  welfare.  Nor  can  we  otherwise 
give  equal  vigor  to  this  spirit  of  improvement.  Yet 
here  as  elsewhere  our  gains  are  accompanied  with  corre- 
sponding losses.  Competition  is  responsible  for  those 
imitations  and  imperceptible  changes  which  cheapen 
products  without  an  equivalent  reduction  of  prices. 
Each  advance  gives  occasion  to  a  regression  by  which 
our  gains  are  in  part  stolen  from  us. 

These  four  functions  involve  so  many  particulars  — 

i  "Recent  Economic  Changes,"  David  A.  Wells,  p.  3. 


FUNCTIONS   OF  COMPETITION.  151 

particulars  so  widely  scattered  and  beyond  the  observa- 
tion of  any  one  set  of  persons  — as  to  demand,  in  their 
performance,  that  omnipresent  and  Argus-eyed  agent 
we  know  as  competition ;  a  competition  that  sets  every 
one  everywhere  at  work,  at  the  pitch  of  his  powers,  to 
secure  the  advantage  nearest  him. 

Competition,  through  its  service  in  settling  price, 
quantity,  adaptation,  and  quality,  becomes  the  chief 
instrument  in  distribution.  While  we  are  by  no  means 
satisfied  with  the  way  in  which  products  are  divided 
among  producers,  we  are  at  a  loss  to  discover  any  more 
just  principle  than  that  involved  in  competition,  or  any 
practical  method  of  distribution  promoting  more  effec- 
tively the  general  purpose  of  social  discipline. 

Neither  the  amount  of  labor  nor  the  kind  of  labor 
performed,  nor  the  two  together,  would  suffice  to  deter- 
mine prices  advantageously.  Aside  from  competition, 
neither  of  these  two  terms  would  be  present,  in  any  ful- 
ness, as  subjects  of  estimate ;  and  any  estimate  we 
might  make  in  anticipation,  or  in  the  progress  of  events, 
would  come  to  a  speedy  halt  under  the  inertia  of  events 
themselves.  The  most  obvious  principle  of  justice  which 
concerns  distribution  is,  that  every  man  is  entitled  to 
his  own  powers.  There  can  be  no  more  manifest  rob- 
bery than  that  which  deprives  one  of  the  fruits  of  his 
own  labor.  Competition  discloses  quickly  and  certainly 
insight,  industry,  enterprise,  and,  in  conceding  them 
their  advantage,  plants  itself  on  the  undeniable  princi- 
ple—  a  man  is  entitled  to  himself.  If  we  are  wisely  to 
lay  down  between  man  and  man  the  lines  of  possession, 
this  first  truth  in  the  code  of  justice  must  find  free 
play.     Indeed,    we    can    bring    no    attack    against  the 


152  ECONOMICS. 

awards  of  competition  except  under  this  same  principle, 
that  some  one  has  been  robbed  of  the  returns  of  his 
powers. 

The  social  discipline  offered  by  competition  is  also  of 
the  best.  It  leads  directly  to  individual  enterprise  and 
combined  effort.  The  largest  profits  are  found  in  those 
undertakings  which  best  unite  insight  and  assimilation, 
the  largest  production  in  complete  submission  to  the 
wants  of  men.  Competition  rests,  therefore,  on  the 
acceptance  of  productive  forces  in  their  most  direct, 
effective,  and  just  form.  Our  labor  lies  in  assigning 
those  equal  conditions  under  which  the  personal  rights 
of  every  competitor  are  fully  sustained.  This  simply 
means  that  competition  is  not  allowed,  by  some  false 
step,  to  arrest  itself. 

The  inevitableness  of  competition  has  given  it  with 
economists  the  force  of  a  supreme  law.  It  has  been, 
therefore,  with  some  surprise  and  chagrin  that  it  has 
been  discovered  that  this  law  does  not  itself  control  the 
terms  under  which  it  takes  effect,  and  that  it  is  as  need- 
ful for  us  to  know  its  limitations,  and  prepare  the  way 
for  its  successful  operation,  as  it  is  to  accept  it  in  its 
services. 

§  7.  The  earliest  limitation  of  competition,  and  one 
that  is  never  wholly  cast  off,  is  that  of  custom.  Com- 
petition, a  prevalence  of  a  sense  of  values  in  a  commu- 
nity and  an  easy  motion  within  itself  in  reference  to 
them,  does  not  belong  to  primitive  forms  of  life,  but  is 
the  result  of  very  considerable  development.  The  vil- 
lage community,  with  weak  and  restricted  ambitions  and 
familiar  relations,  defining  the  position  and  duties  of 
its   members,  gave  little  occasion  for   traffic.     The  im- 


LIMITATIONS    ON   COMPETITION.  153 

pulse  to  trade  was  neither  strong  enough,  nor  general 
enough,  to  develop  the  laws  which  lie  latent  in  it. 
Customary  sentiments  were  far  stronger.  Trade  first 
gained  freedom  between  different  communities  in  tran- 
sient markets,  where  strangers  met  each  other  and  where 
the  restraints  of  custom  were  no  longer  felt.  This  lib- 
erty it  carried  much  later  into  the  relaxed  relations 
of  citizens.  A  long  period  in  social  development  has 
gone  before  the  industrial  era,  and  has  felt  but  lightly 
its  impulses. 

There  are  also  many  shreds  of  custom  which  remain, 
even  in  the  most  active  commercial  periods,  and  put 
no  inconsiderable  restraint  on  competition.  Many  ar- 
ticles, for  convenience,  bear  a  fixed  price,  as  a  loaf  of 
bread,  a  glass  of  beer,  a  cigar,  car-fare,  hack-fare,  tolls, 
admissions  to  places  of  amusements.  The  rewards  of 
professional  labor  are  largely  assigned  either  by  cus- 
tom, or  by  the  monopoly  of  unusual  powers.  The  ser- 
vices of  a  physician  are  given  at  a  recognized  rate,  or 
the  charge  is  increased  by  the  reputation  the  practi- 
tioner has  secured.  The  condition  of  complete  compe- 
tition is  the  power  of  several  to  render  essentially  the 
same  aid,  with  the  absence  of  any  settled  price. 

A  feeling  of  partiality  prevails  in  all  occupations  in 
which  personal  contact  and  personal  qualities  play  any 
considerable  part.  The  wages  of  teachers  are  assigned 
more  frequently  by  custom  than  by  competition.  Till 
recently,  professors  in  colleges  received  the  same  sal- 
aries, each  college  suiting  its  payments  to  its  resources. 
Competition  is  now  somewhat  altering  this  method.  In 
the  ministry  there  is  a  strong  religious  sentiment,  which 
struggles  against  a  law  of  remuneration  which  simply 


154  ECONOMICS. 

expresses  commercial  relations.  "  A  wicked  world  is 
ready  to  sneer  at  the  call  of  duty,  which  is  also  a  call 
of  dollars." 

An  important  and  unfortunate  limitation  of  competi- 
tion arises  from  the  ignorance  of  those  extremely  poor, 
and  from  their  narrow  resources.  The  poor  are  not 
good  buyers,  nor  do  they  buy  at  the  best  places.  The 
kinds  of  goods  they  can  purchase  are  so  inferior,  or 
the  amount  called  for  is  so  small,  or  their  credit  is  so 
limited,  or  the  range  of  their  knowledge  is  so  restricted, 
or  their  diffidence  and  distrust  are  so  great,  that  they 
buy  almost  exclusively  in  poor  localities  at  exorbitant 
prices.  Even  in  large  commercial  cities,  there  are  cer- 
tain streets  and  sections  where  rates  have  little  to  do 
with  the  current  cost  of  goods.  This  tendency  to  a 
patient  submission  to  hard  terms  is  enhanced  by  na- 
tional and  by  clannish  predilections.  Customs  which 
in  the  outset  completely  rule  prices  never  wholly  give 
way  in  the  lower  classes. 

Another  limitation  is  some  form  of  monopoly.  TVe 
need  not  speak  extendedly  of  legal  monopolies,  for  com- 
merce has  long  contended  against  them.  Yet  even  here 
there  is  a  very  considerable  remainder.  Protection,  as 
a  civic  dogma,  aims  to  limit,  and  does  greatly  limit, 
competition,  and  that  too  within  the  nation  protected 
as  well  as  without  it.  Patents  and  copyrights  do  the 
same  thing.  The  government  prefers  to  sacrifice  the 
freedom  of  production  to  other  interests  which  it  is 
pursuing. 

There  are  many  natural  monopolies  from  which  there 
is  no  escape,  or  only  a  partial  one.  All  personal  power 
that    is    incapable   of   acquisition  is,  in  the    services  it 


LIMITATIONS   ON   COMPETITION.  155 

renders,  a  monopoly.  The  qualities  of  different  soils, 
fitting  them  to  a  peculiar  form  of  production,  as  of  wine 
or  cotton  or  fruit,  place  their  owners  beyond  the  range 
of  competition.  Various  favorable  positions  in  a  com- 
mercial city  have  a  similar  effect. 

There  are  also  many  important  monopolies  in  modern 
society  which  rest  partly  on  law,  partly  on  the  nature 
of  the  case,  and  partly  on  the  interests  of  the  commu- 
nity. A  good  example  of  these  is  the  gas  supply  of  a 
city,  or  of  any  subdivision  of  it.  A  corporate  company 
receives  the  privilege  of  supplying  a  certain  area  with 
gas.  The  securing  of  a  site,  the  building  of  works,  and 
the  laying  of  pipes  give  the  first  occupants  an  advantage 
not  easily  overcome.  Of  much  more  importance  is  the 
fact  that  the  community  can  be  best,  and  most  cheaply, 
served  by  a  single  plant.  The  larger  the  gas-works,  the 
more  economically  they  can  be  run.  It  is  a  great  an- 
noyance, and  a  useless  expenditure,  to  pipe  twice  over 
the  same  district.  Competition,  therefore,  instead  of 
reducing  the  price  of  gas,  must  necessarily  increase  its 
cost,  or  result  in  serious  loss.  If  a  single  company  can 
be  compelled  to  satisfy  itself  with  moderate  profits,  it 
can  render  a  given  district  a  cheaper  and  better  service 
than  can  possibly  be  secured  by  two  companies. 

Hence,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  most  competition  in  the 
manufacture  of  gas  is  apparent,  not  real.  It  issues  in 
the  absorption  of  the  weaker  plant  by  the  stronger,  and 
in  a  rise  of  prices  to  meet  the  waste  of  capital.  The 
threatened  formation  of  a  second  company  may  be  em- 
ployed either  as  a  means  of  forcing  a  way  into  the 
1  first  company,  or  as  a  means  of  compelling  it  to  buy  off 
the   intruders.     Competition,   in   any  field   in  which   the 


156  ECONOMICS. 

service  can  best  be  rendered  by  a  single  agent,  becomes 
a  kind  of  blackmailing. 

To  this  class  of  quasi-monopolies  belong  public  elec- 
tric lights,  water-works,  street-railways,  oftentimes  om- 
nibus-lines, telegraphs,  telephones,  railroads.  Strictly 
parallel,  or  proximately  parallel,  railways  are  quite  sure 
to  fail  of  their  apparent  purpose.  They  put  upon  the 
community  a  more  expensive  and  cumbersome  service, 
and  must  themselves  endure  the  loss,  or  inflict  it  on 
others  in  high  rates.  An  apparent  effort  of  this  order 
to  reduce  prices  is  likely  to  issue,  as  in  the  case  of  the 
West  Shore  Railway  and  the  New  York  Central,  in  the 
passage  of  both  roads  under  one  management,  with  a 
heavy  loss  of  capital.  The  last  state,  so  far  as  cheap- 
ness and  efficiency  are  concerned,  becomes  worse  than 
the  first.  Railroads,  from  the  nature  of  the  case,  are 
in  a  high  degree  monopolies.  We  can  no  more  advan- 
tageously duplicate  them,  than  we  could  profitably  pour 
two  rivers  through  one  valley.  They  are  best  treated 
as  monopolies.  They  are  often  also  monopolies  by 
terminal  advantages,  such  as  well-located  stations  and 
depots,  access  to  elevators  and  waterfronts,  a  favor- 
able passage  through  cities.  Most  of  these  gains  cannot 
be  duplicated.  The  best  way  tends  to  exclude,  and  ought 
to  exclude,  all  inferior  ways.  Natural  advantages  are 
not  concessive  to  competition  and  often  entirely  circum- 
vent it. 

To  the  force  of  custom  among  men,  to  the  force  of 
natural  tendencies  in  things,  is  to  be  added,  as  a  third  re- 
straint on  competition,  a  rapid  accumulation  of  power 
in  single  hands  by  virtue  of  the  very  process  of  produc- 
tion.   The   inequality  between  producers  often  becomes 


LIMITATIONS   ON  COMPETITION.  V)l 

so  great  as  to  render  competition  merely  formal.  The 
strong  are  left  in  possession  of  the  field.  In  manufac- 
ture the  best  machinery,  —  often  expensive  and  requiring 
frequent  change  —  superior  ability  in  direction  and  over- 
sight, innumerable  economies  made  possible  by  the  mag- 
nitude of  the  business,  advantages  in  the  purchase  of 
material  and  in  the  sale  of  goods,  felicity  of  position, 
and  ready  access  to  the  best  markets,  unite  to  strengthen 
certain  establishments  and  to  take  from  others  all  real 
power  in  regulating  prices.  A  large  producer  can  sat- 
isfy himself  with  a  per  cent  of  profit  which  would  yield 
no  adequate  return  to  a  moderate  producer.  One-tenth 
of  a  cent  on  a  yard  of  cotton  yields  the  manufacturer 
of  a  hundred  thousand  yards  one  hundred  dollars,  but 
the  manufacturer  of  ten  million  yards  ten  thousand 
dollars. 

In  commerce  similar  advantages  and  the  advantage 
of  opening  and  controlling  new  markets  lead  to  similar 
results.  A  great  retail  merchant  is  able  to  give  a  rapid- 
ity and  a  decision  to  sales  which  keep  him  constantly 
in  the  foreground.  He  opens  at  a  favorable  moment  in 
full  variety  certain  seasonable  styles  of  goods.  He  at- 
tracts at  once  the  best  purchasers.  As  soon  as  the  sales 
relax,  he  marks  down  the  remaining  goods,  closes  them 
out  at  a  sacrifice,  and  starts  in  a  new  direction.  His 
profits  in  the  earlier  season  make  insignificant  the  losses 
of  the  later  season.  His  feeble  competitors  are  hardly 
in  the  field  before  the  fall  of  prices  commences,  and  they 
share  in  the  loss  with  slight  participation  in  the  previous 
profits.  The  strong  man  keeps  the  crest  of  the  wave, 
and  leaves  the  hollow  of  the  wave  for  those  behind  him. 

1 "  Recent  Economic  Changes,"  p.  462. 


158  ECONOMICS, 

Even  agriculture  does  not  wholly  escape  the  pressure 
of  realized  advantages.  A  wheat-field  in  which  twenty 
reapers  start  out  at  once  is  harvested  more  cheaply,  and 
oftentimes  in  better  condition,  than  the  few  acres  of  the 
moderate  farmer.  Competition  is  not  a  process  which 
constantly  renews  its  own  conditions,  but  one  which 
tends  to  restrict  itself  by  permanent  advantages. 

Civil  law  frequently  comes  in  to  aid  'this  movement. 
The  state,  in  the  pursuit  of  one  or  another  object,  or  in 
concession  to  the  interests  of  the  ruler,  greatly  facili- 
tates this  tendency  toward  accumulated  power.  Its 
taxes  may  be  so  laid  as  duties  or  excises  or  licenses  as 
to  modify  production,  and  give  certain  producers  a  grave 
advantage.  The  very  power  of  the  industries  favored 
by  law  enables  them  to  claim  and  secure  more  and  more 
favorable  conditions.  They  are  soon  safely  intrenched 
against  all  ordinary  assaults  of  competition  in  economic 
and  civic  gains  Avhich  are  the  very  substance  of  their 
wealth. 

Patent  laws  have  been  a  constant  resource  of  capital- 
ists seeking  safety  from  competition.  Patents  have 
been  accumulated  and  held  back  to  cover,  in  surrepti- 
tious ways,  large  concerns  to  which  the  public  was 
under  slight,  if  any,  obligations.  The  inventor,  to 
whom  exclusively  the  public  owes  its  debt,  receiving  a 
lump  sum,  or  hired  on  a  moderate  salary,  has  often  been 
but  a  meagre  partaker  in  the  fruits  of  his  own  labor. 
The  state  has  been  wholly  unconcerned  while  a  rich 
company  has  converted  the  rewards  of  invention  into 
extravagant  returns,  and  thus  appropriated  them.  The 
profits  of  the  Bell  Telephone  Company  have  been,  for  a 
series  of  years,  more  than  a  hundred  per  cent.     When 


LIMITATIONS   ON   COMPETITION.  159 

the  state  is  pursuing  a  desirable  end,  it  seems  to  care 
very  little  whether  that  end  is  reached,  or  whether  its 
gifts  are  diverted  to  purposes  wholly  undesirable.  The 
state  has  thus,  with  great  indifference,  as  in  the  case  of 
the  Carnegie  Iron  Works,  increased  a  power  already 
too  great  for  free  competition.  It  has  not  assiduously 
sought  the  freedom  of  trade. 

The  most  important  direction  in  which  the  state  has 
unintentionally  altered  the  terms  of  competition,  has 
been  in  creating  new  legal  entities  of  unusual  power, 
and  frequently  with  unusual  privileges.  The  state 
could  not  have  anticipated  the  startling  results  of  its 
own  procreative  processes ;  nor,  if  it  had,  could  it  well 
have  refused  to  enter  on  a  method  so  wonderfully  pro- 
ductive. Now,  having  had  an  abundant  experience  of 
the  evils  of  accumulated  power,  it  is  bound  to  provide 
the  remedies  of  its  own  remissness.  It  alone  can  cope 
with  what  it  alone  creates. 

The  simplest  legal  concession  in  the  direction  of  com- 
bination is  that  of  partnership.  Two  or  more  persons, 
uniting  in  business,  secure  the  legal  rights  and  the  unity 
of  action  which  belong  to  an  individual.  They,  on  the 
other  hand,  are  collectively  and  singly  subject  to  the 
same  claims  as  individuals.  A  marked  extension  of 
this  principle  of  combination  is  that  of  the  corporation. 
A  body  of  persons,  large  or  small,  is  enabled  to  act, 
through  executive  officers,  as  one  person,  is  often  en- 
dowed with  rights  quite  beyond  the  scope  of  individu- 
als, accumulates  large  resources  in  a  single  undertaking, 
and  is  limited  in  its  responsibilities  to  its  joint  action. 
A  joint-stock  company  gives  the  method  still  further 
freedom.      The  company   is  indifferent  to  the   number 


160  ECONOMICS. 

and  the  locality  of  those  taking  part  in  it.  The  interest 
and  the  responsibility  of  the  individual  are  limited  to 
the  stock  held  by  him.  There  may  be  a  constant 
change  of  membership  without  affecting  the  identity 
or  altering  the  power  of  the  company.  The  officers  of 
the  company  control  its  affairs  with  only  an  indirect, 
and  frequently  with  a  very  indifferent,  reference  to  the 
wish  of  its  members.  There  is  no  competition  in  busi- 
ness more  to  be  feared  than  a  well-managed  company. 
The  aggregate  of  capital  may  reach  a  large  amount. 
Losses  are  distributed  between  so  many,  and  are  so  dis- 
sociated from  the  general  welfare  of  the  holders  of 
stock,  as  to  inflict  but  little  suffering,  or  to  impose  but 
slight  restraints.  The  resources  of  the  company  may 
be  rapidly  increased  by  the  promise  of  profits.  Its 
management  is  impersonal,  and  is  open  to  no  appeals 
of  forbearance  or  of  sympath}r. 

If  a  company,  in  possession  of  a  costly  plant,  finds,  in 
common  with  other  producers,  that  immediate  profits  are 
impossible,  it  may  prefer  to  push  production  till  the 
weaker  are  borne  to  the  wall,  and  then  cover  its  losses 
in  the  better  times  which  are  sure  to  follow.  The  com- 
pany has  little  or  no  power  to  change  the  direction  of  its 
action  ;  it  has  great  powers  of  endurance,  and  it  prefers 
to  increase  the  pressure  till  relief  is  found  in  crushing 
the  weak. 

A  further  incident  of  the  concentration  of  power,  due 
in  part  to  development  in  production  and  in  part  to 
heedless  concessions  of  the  state,  has  been  the  mastery 
which  a  company  may  secure  over  independent  but 
subsidiary  branches  of  business.  Thus  the  Standard 
Oil  Company  owed  much  of  its  success,  in  the  outset,  to 


LIMITATIONS   ON   COMPETITION:  1(>1 

the  influence  it  exerted  over  railways,  an  influence  that 
quite  anticipated  all  fair  competition.  In  one  of  our 
large  cities,  a  company  whose  object  was  to  remove 
manure,  obtained,  by  means  of  docks  and  boats  and  rail- 
roads, so  complete  a  mastery  of  the  business  as  to  be 
able  to  compel  a  stable  which  had  previously  sold  its 
manure  for  a  thousand  dollars  to  give  two  thousand  to 
have  it  removed. 

A  fifth  limitation  arises  from  the  very  nature  of  com- 
petition itself.  Competition  varies  in  degree  and  iu 
character  with  social  phases.  It  is  not  a  universal  force 
of  equal  power  in  all  periods,  but  one  that  takes  a 
changeable  part  in  different  periods.  There  are,  in  ref- 
erence to  competition,  an  early,  a  middle,  and  a  later 
stage.  In  the  first  of  these,  competition  is  scarcely  felt. 
In  the  second,  it  is  in  full  and  favorable  operation. 
In  the  third,  it  suffers  perversion  and  suspension  from 
the  violence  of  its  own  action. 

The  primitive  period  is  that  of  custom.  Men  aim 
chiefly  at  simple  subsistence;  competition  plays  an  in- 
conspicuous part. 

When  the  second  or  industrial  era  arises,  and,  under 
the  modern  forms  of  discovery  and  invention,  begins  to 
issue  in  a  rapid  extension  of  social  power,  men  are 
widely  stimulated  to  production.  Competitive  effort 
springs  up  on  all  sides,  and  the  race  for  prosperity 
commences.  But  this  stage  is  not  a  permanent  one. 
As  in  other  races,  advantage  and  power  soon  develop 
themselves,  first  bring  the  struggle  to  a  crisis,  and 
then  to  a  close.  Wealth  accumulates  in  a  few  hands. 
Natural  and  acquired  advantages  gather  about  it.  Grow- 
ingly  powerful  means  of  production  are  concentrated  in 


162  ECONOMICS. 

costly  plants.  Weak  competitors  are  driven  from  the 
field.  The  arena  is  cleared  for  the  strong.  Men  push 
each  other  to  a  point  at  which  gains  cease  to  be  possible, 
and  heavy  losses  are  suffered.  Competition,  in  place  of 
a  wholesome  rivalry,  becomes  a  war  of  extermination. 
The  only  relief  from  the  excessive  pressure  is  the  ear- 
lier one  of  combination,  or  the  later  one  of  the  com- 
plete triumph  of  the  strongest.  Competition  means  in 
Economics  a  wholesome  comparison  of  results  which 
compels  each  producer  to  do  his  best,  and  rewards  him 
according  to  the  excellence  of  his  work.  As  a  matter 
of  fact,  competition  becomes,  in  the  progress  of  events, 
a  deadly  conflict  in  which  all  suffer  severely,  the  weak 
perish,  and  the  strong  survive  to  rule  the  field.  There 
is  as  much  difference  between  productive  competition 
and  competition  in  the  last  stages  of  commercial  war, 
as  between  a  cylinder  in  measured  revolution  and  one 
that  begins  to  fly  in  fragments  in  all  directions.  The 
only  relief,  for  example,  from  ruinous  competition  be- 
tween railroads,  a  competition  that  disturbs  all  branches 
of  business  by  its  uncertain  rates,  is  oftentimes  a  pool 
that  replaces  unbearable  losses  by  a  division  of  profits. 

The  speculative  temper  is  developed  by  this  struggle, 
and  adds  itself  as  increased  risk  to  the  competitive 
strife.  Men  accustom  themselves  to  danger ;  they  live 
in  a  feverish  atmosphere  at  a  far  remove  from  firm, 
continuous  production. 

There  thus  arises  a  most  serious  moral  limitation  to 
competition  as  a  productive  principle.  The  severity  of 
the  strife  makes  men  unscrupulous.  They  look  upon 
business  as  a  kind  of  warfare.  On  this  plea  they  jus- 
tify to  themselves   and    to    others    a  great  variety  of 


COMPETITION  AS  A    SOCIAL   LAW.  16 


Q 


unfair  and  destructive  methods  which  promise  success. 
The  competition  contemplated  by  Economics  is  displaced 
by  something  which  bears  the  same  name,  but  is  almost 
wholly  another  thing.  Production  is  not  regarded  in 
its  productive  processes,  nor  in  the  harmony  of  its  final 
adjustments,  but  as  an  immediate  triumph  of  personal 
interests. 

It  has  thus  happened  that  competition,  so  misdi- 
rected, has  ceased  to  be  accepted  by  many  as  a  natural 
and  beneficent  law,  and  has  come  to  be  looked  on  as  an 
empty  plea  for  all  forms  of  injustice.  The  common 
weal,  as  sought  in  Socialism,  is  made  to  replace  the 
ruinous  warfare  of  individual  interests. 

As  another  result  of  the  same  evil,  capitalists  justify 
the  various  forms  of  trusts  as  nothing  more  than  a  rea- 
sonable safeguard  of  profits.  Workmen,  who  have  long 
suffered  the  worst  results  of  misdirected  competition, 
combine  to  put  upon  it  some  wholesome  restrictions. 
Workmen  have  been  only  too  slow  in  learning  in  the 
school  of  experience  this  lesson  of  making  ready  fur 
strife. 

It  thus  becomes  most  true  that  the  economic  history 
of  the  world  does  not  teach  us  to  look  on  competition 
as  a  law  allied  to  gravity,  unavoidably  and  uniformly 
beneficent,  but  as  a  variable  relation  with  gains  and 
losses ;  the  one  to  be  secured  and  the  other  to  be  es- 
caped, with  clear  insight  into  the  existing  conditions  of 
welfare. 

§  8.  What,  under  all  these  limitations,  remains  of 
competition  as  a  social  law?  We  must  still  allow  it 
the  rank  of  a  natural  tendency,  potent  in  the  resolution 
of  many   difficulties  and   in   giving   the  primary  condi- 


1(14  ECONOMICS. 

tions  of  movement.  Emulation  arises  inevitably  among 
men.  Virtue  could  hardly  have  its  true  power  without 
it.  But  if  we  insist  on  transforming  emulation  into  a 
systematic  government,  as  in  the  regulation  of  a  school, 
it  at  once  develops  grave  evils.  Competition  gives  play 
to  individual  powers.  It  begets  motion,  and  settles  the 
leadership  when  confusion  arises.  It  keeps  in  the  fore- 
ground the  efficient  forces  of  the  world.  We  are  thus,  as 
in  a  wise  hygiene,  prevented  from  putting  the  remedy  in 
advance  of  the  disease.  We  assume  health  as  the  nor- 
mal condition,  and  the  normal  conditions  as  involving 
health,  and  use  no  recipe  except  as  the  corrective  of  a 
distinct  and  positive  ill.  We  have  no  fear  of  remedial 
measures  if  called  for,  but  we  wish  the  call  to  be  clear 
and  definite.  Natural  forces  are  kept  in  the  foreground 
as  opposed  to  artificial  ones.  We  thus  escape  the  fate 
by  which  we  suffer  many  things  of  many  physicians, 
spending  all  that  we  have,  and  are  nothing  bettered  but 
rather  grow  worse.  Such  a  safety  is  quite  as  much  an 
achievement  in  social  as  in  physical  therapeutics. 

We  conclude,  therefore,  that  competition,  acting  in  a 
restrained  way,  will  always  be  a  factor  in  economic 
growth ;  that  it  will  be  increasingly  modified  by  Civics 
and  Ethics  —  men  intelligently  proposing  and  pursuing 
their  common  welfare ;  and  that  it  will  more  and  more 
pass  by  quiet  diffusion  into  those  higher  phases  of  de- 
velopment in  which  natural  laws  are  taken  up  into 
reason  and  ruled  by  it.  As  instinctive  life  prepares  the 
way  for  rational  life  and  sustains  it,  so  competition, 
by  an  inevitable  movement,  leads  us  onward  to  a  stage 
in  which,  in  common  with  all  productive  agents,  it  is  as- 
signed its  exact  service. 


COMPETITION   AS  A    SOCIAL   LAW.  105 

We  are  neither  to  reject  primitive  powers  nor  ac- 
quired powers,  first  gifts  nor  the  wisdom  by  which  we 
correct  them.  It  is  a  great  object  in  the  economic  and 
in  the  social  world  to  put  every  man  in  the  right  place. 
Shall  we  expect  to  do  it  off-hand  by  devise  simply,  or 
shall  we  leave  every  man  to  find  his  place  as  best  he 
can  ?  If  we  are  to  do  either  the  one  or  the  other,  we 
must  do  the  second.  But  are  Ave  bound  exclusively  to 
either  method  ?  "We  may  leave  the  stream  in  its  own 
natural  channel,  and  there  put  upon  it  such  modifica- 
tions as  suit  our  purpose.  We  may  let  each  man  strive 
to  find  his  own  place,  and  still,  in  all  feasible  ways,  as- 
sist him  in  finding  it.  As  we  see  men  and  women 
stream  into  a  great  city  as  the  labors  of  the  day  are 
opening,  we  may  be  glad  that  no  man  or  body  of  men  is 
charged  with  the  task  of  directing  each  unit  in  this 
great  tide  of  life ;  but  we  may  also  rejoice  that  there 
are  so  many  helping  ways  and  hands  by  which  the 
stranded  are  gotten  back  into  the  stream  and  pushed 
toward  their  goal. 

Herein  we  see  the  higher  temper  of  Sociology.  It 
stands  for  the  synthesis  of  many  forces  and  for  that 
light  of  thought  which  does  more  than  reveal  the  prog- 
ress of  events.  It  strives  to  gather  all  agencies,  each 
in  its  own  proportion  and  for  its  own  purpose,  into  that 
supremely  natural  and  supremely  rational  result,  the 
welfare  of  man. 


166  ECONOMICS. 


CHAPTER  III. 

SOCIAL    GROWTH   IN    THE    SEVERAL    FORMS    OF    PRO- 
DUCTION. 

AGRICULTURE. 

§  1.  We  have  discussed  the  degree  in  which  the  pri- 
mary principles  of  Economics  are,  in  their  application, 
modified  by  the  complex  social  facts  with  which  they 
are  associated.  We  wish  further  to  consider  the  devel- 
opment which  the  facts  of  Economics  themselves  un- 
dergo, and  the  social  changes  which  accompany  it.  We 
need  to  do  this  in  connection  with  production,  distribu- 
tion, and  exchange.  The  three  branches  of  production, 
—  agriculture,  manufacture,  and  commerce,  —  while  un- 
dergoing each  its  own  transformations,  mutually  accel- 
erate the  growth  of  one  another. 

§  2.  Agriculture  is  the  primitive  form  and  source  of 
production,  and  always  remains  the  one  which  absorbs 
most  labor.  In  our  late  civil  war  forty-eight  per  cent 
of  the  enlistments  in  the  service  of  the  United  States 
were  from  agriculturists,  and  twenty-four  per  cent  from 
mechanics.  People  in  agricultural  pursuits,  though 
sturdy  and  reliable,  are  usually  slow  to  improve.  The 
hardship  and  seclusion  of  their  work  tend  to  leave  them 
dull  and  unenterprising.  Slavery  and  serfdom  have 
constantly  sheltered  themselves  in  agriculture.  The  im- 
provements in  agriculture,  in  the  modern  era,  have  taken 
place  chiefly  in  the  eighteenth  and  nineteenth  centuries. 


TENURE  OF  LAND.  167 

At  the  opening  of  the  eighteenth  century,  dressed  beeves 
in  England  averaged  370  lbs.,  and  at  its  close  800  lbs. 
Sheep  at  the  beginning  averaged  28  lbs.,  and  at  the  end 
80  lbs.1  Not  only  was  breeding  greatly  improved,  but 
the  fertility  of  the  land  and  the  yield  of  food  were  much 
increased  by  the  introduction  of  clover  and  turnips,  and 
by  drainage  and  manure.  The  present  century  has  car- 
ried these  improvements  rapidly  forward,  and  has  added 
to  them  an  immense  amount  of  farm  machinery.  The 
increased  demand  for  produce,  in  consequence  of  the 
growth  of  manufacture,  and  the  marvellous  inventive 
ingenuity  developed  in  connection  with  manufacture, 
have  told  powerfully  on  agriculture,  transformed  it  as  a 
productive  process,  and  greatly  affected  the  social  char- 
acter of  those  engaged  in  it.  They  are  coming  to  feel 
the  general  movement  of  the  world,  and  to  claim  their 
portion  of  influence  in  it. 

§  3.  The  two  questions  in  connection  with  land  which 
chiefly  interest  society  are  its  tenure  and  the  size  of 
holdings.  In  the  primitive  era  land  was  held  in  com- 
mon. This  arose  from  the  controlling  character  of  kin- 
ship, from  the  fact  that  men  lived  in  small  hamlets  for 
mutual  protection,  that  the  community  rather  than  the 
individual  was  the  significant  unit,  and  from  the  abun- 
dance of  land  and  the  small  range  of  enterprise.  This 
common  tenure  gave  three  divisions,  —  arable  land,  pas- 
ture, and  forest.  The  last  two  were  used  in  common; 
and  arable  land  was  assigned  to  households,  with  more 
or  less  frequent  transfer.  The  chief  features  of  this 
phase  of  development  were  the  communal  character  of 

1  "Pioneers  and  Progress  in  English  Farming,"  11.  E.  Prothero, 
p.  53. 


168  ECONOMICS. 

social  interests,  the  force  of  kinship  as  a  social  tie,  the 
simplicity  of  life,  the  narrow  range  of  arts  and  their 
domestic  character,  the  smallness  of  numbers,  and  the 
general  contentment  with  mere  support. 

This  stage  was  broken  up  by  war,  by  the  growth  of 
classes  incident  to  it,  and  by  economic  development. 
As  soon  as  war  laid  open  the  lands  of  others,  or  devel- 
oped powerful  classes,  there  was  a  strong  tendency  to  an 
extensive  appropriation  of  the  soil,  attended  with  much 
injustice  and  complaint.  Thus  Spurius  Cassius  and 
Marcus  Manlius  lost  their  lives  in  Rome,  in  defence  of 
the  popular  rights  to  the  soil.1  War,  by  promoting  di- 
versity of  rank,  and  by  giving  an  opportunity  to  appro- 
priate land  freely,  —  as  by  the  leaders  of  the  Saxons  in 
England,  —  broke  in  on  this  first  equality  of  rights. 
Later,  the  development  of  arts  and  of  agriculture  tended 
to  the  same  result.  Agriculture  came  to  be  looked  on 
as  a  means  of  wealth.  Land,  as  an  instrument  of  pro- 
duction, could  be  handled  freely  and  successfully  only 
in  connection  with  individual  ownership.  Fields  held 
in  common  were  restricted,  and  were  subjected  to  the 
common  convenience,  both  in  sowing  and  gathering 
crops.  They  were  protected  from  cattle  and  open  to 
Cattle  as  the  people,  moved  by  no  stringent  impulse, 
chose.  The  indifference  and  the  moderate  wants  of  the 
many  rendered  nugatory  the  enterprise  of  the  few.  The 
individual  could  gain  unobstructed  opportunity  only  by 
complete  ownership.  Thus  in  England,  the  raising  of 
sheep,  when  it  became  a  source  of  wealth,  greatly  pro- 
moted the  enclosure  and  personal  control  of  land. 

The  military  era,  which  presented  itself  in  Europe  in 

l  Mornmsen's  "  History  of  Rome,"  vol.  i.  pp.  363,  380. 


TENURE  OF  LAND.  169 

the  Middle  Ages  in  the  form  of  feudalism,  gave  occasion 
to  a  peculiar  tenure.  Military  organization  was  carried 
into  social  relations.  Land  was  assigned  by  military 
leaders  to  their  followers,  and  held  subject  to  certain 
services,  partly  military  and  partly  fiscal.1  These  ser- 
vices, more  or  less  variable,  became  a  ground  of  dispute, 
and  were  capable  of  being  made,  as  in  France,  extremely 
burdensome.  Especially  distasteful  in  England,  they 
were  slowly  cast  off,  and  finally  abolished  in  1GG0.  The 
extent  and  unyielding  character  of  these  burdens  in 
France  was  a  leading  cause  of  the  Revolution. 

The  third,  or  industrial,  era  tends  strongly  to  fee- 
simple.  Land  is  thus  placed  fully  in  the  hands  of  those 
who  are  most  able,  and,  as  a  rule,  are  most  disposed,  to 
use  it  profitably.  Power  is  a  condition  of  productive 
progress.  Tenure  of  land  in  England  has  been  made 
complicated  by  the  conflict  of  different  methods,  but  the 
commercial  tendency  has  carried  ownership  over  more  and 
more  to  fee-simple.  The  easy  transfer  of  land,  which 
is  incident  to  fee-simple,  has  been  resisted  by  primogeni- 
ture, by  the  entail  of  landed  estates,  and  by  rental  for 
long  periods,  all  associated  with  the  maintenance  of  a 
landed  gentry.  While  much  has  been  done  to  make  land 
mobile,  much  remains  to  be  done  before  it  will  be  per- 
fectly obedient  to  economic  forces.  A  strong  tendency 
to  entail  is  still  present,  and  the  title  to  land  is  not 
readily  transferred.  The  Australian  method  of  a  title 
guaranteed  by  the  public — open  to  unobstructed  com- 
mercial forces  —  is  yet  to  be  adopted. 

As  early  as  the  fifteenth  century,  agriculture  passed 

i  "  History  of  England  in  the  Eighteenth  Century,  "Win.  E.  H. 
Lecky,  vol.  v.  p.  376, 


170  ECONOMICS. 

in  England  from  "  self-sufficiency  to  profit-earning," 
chiefly  as  the  result  of  the  development  of  the  manufac- 
ture of  woollen  goods  in  Flanders.1  Complaints  of  the 
enclosure  of  land  for  the  rearing  of  sheep  became  very 
urgent  and  general.  Sir  Thomas  More  affirmed  that 
they  threw  down  houses,  plucked  down  towns,  left 
nothing  standing  but  the  church,  and  used  that  as  a 
sheep-house.  This  industry  gave  the  first  blow  to  the 
early  power  and  independence  of  the  yeomen  of  Eng- 
land, in  the  fourteenth  and  fifteenth  centuries.  The 
movement  was  accelerated  in  the  eighteenth  century, 
and  the  earlier  portion  of  the  nineteenth,  by  the  rapid 
development  of  manufacture,-  and  the  demand  it  gave 
for  agricultural  products.  Enclosures  by  Acts  of  Parlia- 
ment, which  were  comparatively  rare  in  the  earlier  por- 
tion of  the  eighteenth  century,  became,  at  its  close, 
frequent  and  extended,  and  the  great  estates  of  the  pres- 
ent period  were  built  up.2 

The  results  of  this  enclosure  of  land,  before  open  to 
the  public,  were  wholly  unfavorable  to  weak  farmers. 
They  lost  their  pasturage,  and  were  at  the  same  time 
hard  pressed  by  the  superior  productive  power  of  their 
neighbors.  Domestic  manufactures,  which  had  been  a 
subsidiary  source  of  livelihood,  were  slowly  disappearing. 
Emigration  and  the  growing  demand  in  towns  for  labor 
drew  away  the  most  enterprising.  The  less  enterprising 
sank  under  the  general  pressure,  and  became  tenants  and 
farm-hands.  Land,  under  the  general  law  of  commerce, 
passed  into  the  possession  of  those  who  could  hold  it 

1  "  Pioneers  and  Progress  in  English  Farming,"  R.  E.  Prothero, 
p.  18. 

2  "  History  of  England  in  the  Eighteenth  Century,"  vol.  i.  p.  565; 
vol.  vi.  pp.  172,  l!«i. 


SIZE  OF  HOLDINGS.  171 

most  profitably.  This  tendency  in  England  to  concen- 
trate the  ownership  was  increased  by  the  love  of  rural 
pursuits,  by  the  social  distinction  which  has  been  con- 
nected with  large  estates,  and,  for  a  long  period,  by  the 
protection  of  farm  produce  and  the  political  power  of 
the  country  magnate.  While  rent  doubled,  the  wages  of 
farm-hands  increased  but  one-eighth.1  The  great  reduc- 
tion in  the  profits  of  agriculture  and  the  growing  claims 
of  farm-hands  are  now  acting  in  the  opposite  direction. 
An  effort  is  made  to  supply  the  workmen  with  a  modi- 
cum of  land.  The  small  economies  of  the  moderate 
farmer,  the  light  returns  he  accepts  for  his  own  labor, 
and  his  patience  under  hardship,  aid  him,  when  prices 
are  low,  in  securing  and  holding  land. 

§  4.  The  second  point  of  interest  in  land  is  the  size 
of  holdings.  Holdings  may  be  divided,  in  a  simple  way, 
into  large,  moderate  and  small  holdings.  Medium  farms 
in  this  country  would  cover  those  which  are  sufficiently 
large  to  fully  occupy  a  household,  and  not  so  large  as  to 
much  exceed  its  power.  The  designation  is  a  vague  one, 
as  much  depends  on  the  character  of  the  customary  cul- 
tivation. Farms  between  eighty,  and  three  hundred  and 
twenty,  acres  are  regarded  in  the  United  States  as  mod- 
erate farms. 

Each  of  these  three  forms  of  holdings  has  its  advan- 
tages and  disadvantages,  from  an  economic  and  social 
point  of  view.  Large  holdings  may  be  associated  with 
rent,  or  may  be  cultivated  directly  by  the  owner.  "We 
first  consider  the  more  common  form,  large  holdings 
united  with  rent.     In  England  and  Wales,  two-thirds  of 

1  "  Pioneers  and  .Progress  in  English  Farming,"  II.  E.  Prothero, 
p.  21M. 


172  ECONOMICS. 

the  soil  is  owned  by  10,207  persons ;  in  Ireland  by 
1,942 ;  and  in  Scotland,  by  330. *  England  offers  a 
favorable  example  of  land  cultivated  by  tenants,  and 
Ireland  a  very  unfavorable  example.  The  two,  as  con- 
trasted with  each  other,  show  how  much  economic  rela- 
tions are  modified  by  social  sentiments  and  customs. 
The  tyranny  of  the  past,  differences  in  national  char- 
acter, religious  prejudices,  the  accumulated  evils  of  a 
bad  system,  have  operated  in  Ireland  to  make  the 
relation  of  landlord  and  tenant  unendurable.  The  eco- 
nomic forces  have  been  unable  to  right  themselves  by 
their  own  action,  and  a  civil  remedy  has  been  sought. 

The  social  evils  of  rent  are  a  permanent  division  in 
social  classes,  with  a  comparatively  light  service  rendered 
by  the  landlord  to  the  community.  He  is,  in  a  measure, 
and  still  more  he  seems  to  be,  the  sole  heir  of  the  com- 
mon heritage.  Farm-hands  are  likely  to  be  depressed 
into  a  distinct  class,  without  intelligence  and  without 
enterprise.  This  evil  has  been  very  conspicuous  in 
England,  notwithstanding  the  good  terms  on  which 
landlords  and  tenants  have  stood  with  each  other. 
Farm-hands  have  felt  the  full  weight  of  an  inelastic 
system,  and  have  reached  a  very  low  point  under  its 
steady  pressure. 

The  economic  evils  of  rent  are  the  readiness  with 
which  it  becomes  extreme,  its  want  of  adaptation  to 
favorable  and  to  unfavorable  seasons,  the  social  de- 
pressions which  may  accompany  it,  —  as  under  the 
repeated  subletting  in  Ireland  —  and  its  unfavorable  re- 
lation to  all  improvements.  The  tenant  is  not  usually 
in  a  position  to  confront  the  landlord  and  secure  fair 

l  "The  English  Constitution,"  E.  Boutmy,  p.  140. 


SIZE   OF  HOLDINGS.  173 

terms.  He  has  too  little  power  to  change  his  location, 
ami  suffers  too  much  loss  in  connection  with  such  a 
transfer  to  incline  him  to  resist  extortion.  The  motives 
to  enterprise  in  methods  of  cultivation  are  greatly  re- 
duced. Agricultural  improvements  involve  the  perma- 
nent betterment  of  the  land,  and  include  in  their  returns 
a  long  period.  This  slowness  of  profit  is  sufficient  of 
itself  to  deter  the  less  active  minds  from  effort,  and  is 
much  increased  in  its  influence  by  a  prospective  unfair 
division.  The  gains  and  losses  of  husbandry  are  not 
readily  and  equally  divided  between  tenant  and  land- 
lord. The  agriculturist,  slow  to  feel  the  incentives  to 
progress,  is  further  weakened  by  his  subordinate  posi- 
tion. So  great  do  these  evils  become  as  to  compel  the 
state  to  provide  for  more  moderate  rents,  a  more  just 
division  of  the  gains  of  improvements,  and  more  favora- 
ble conditions  of  purchase.  Neither  as  a  social  nor  as 
an  economic  system  has  rent  much  to  commend  it. 

Large  holdings  with  direct  cultivation  have  advan- 
tages. They  favor  all  forms  of  improvement,  and  they 
raise  the  social  standard.  Enterprise  and  capital  are 
brought  to  agriculture  and  the  magnitude  of  the  opera- 
tions gives  an  opportunity  for  the  profitable  use  of  the 
best  machinery  and  the  more  costly  methods.  It  is 
especially  true  in  farming  that  the  destruction  of  the 
poor  is  their  poverty.  The  chief  social  evil  of  these 
holdings  is  that  they  accumulate  power  in  the  hands  of 
a  few,  and  so  tend  ultimately  to  arrest  the  organization 
of  society. 

The  United  States  is  characterized  by  moderate  hold- 
ings, with  a  tendency,  in  recent  years,  to  large  holdings. 
In   1870,  the  number  of  farms  between  500  and  1,000 


17-f  ECONOMICS. 

acres  was  15,873  ;  in  1880,  it  was  75,972.  The  number 
of  farms  of  1,000  acres  or  over  in  1870  was  3,720  ;  in 
1880,  it  was  28,578.  There  was  also  a  falling  off  in  the 
number  of  farms  below  50  acres. 

The  advantages  of  moderate  farms  are  extended  own- 
ership, social  equality,  and  good  citizenship.  They 
favor  personal  oversight,  promote  small  economies,  and 
call  out  in  their  owners  any  latent  productive  power. 
Their  disadvantages  are  the  frequent  lack  of  the  capi- 
tal necessary  for  good  tillage,  and  the  readiness  with 
which  the  methods  of  cultivation,  by  the  contagion 
of  bad  habit,  become  careless,  inadequate,  and  waste- 
ful. The  farmer,  in  simply  comfortable  circumstances, 
is  impelled  neither  by  wealth  nor  by  poverty.  He 
is  satisfied,  like  his  neighbor,  with  "  getting  along." 
This  unambitious  mood  is  unfortunate  socially  and 
productively. 

France  is  an  example,  on  the  whole,  of  small  holdings, 
though  these  are  united  with  many  large  ones.  Three 
millions  own,  on  the  average,  2\  acres  ;  two  millions,  15 
acres.  A  tax  of  four  per  cent  on  farm-houses  bearing  a 
rental  of  fifty  francs  yields  $700,000.  Small  holdings 
were  common  in  France  before  the  Eevolution,  and  were 
greatly  promoted  by  it. 

The  evils  of  small  holdings  are  serious.  They  are 
not  favorable  to  the  use  of  farm-machinery,  or  to  novel 
or  expensive  improvements.  They  interfere  with  the 
division  of  labor.  Not  only  does  the  peasant  perform 
every  kind  of  farm  work,  he  has  little  to  expend  in 
the  outside  world,  and  so  is  led  to  do  all  that  he  can  do 
in   providing   himself  with  tools,  shelter,  and  clothing. 

1  "  Travels  in  France,"  Arthur  Young. 


SIZE   OF  HOLDINGS.  i?5 

Thus  the  standard  of  living  sinks  very  low  with  a  cor- 
responding humiliation  of  character.  Society  is  wanting 
in  intelligence  and  enterprise,  and  becomes  immobile. 
His  small  piece  of  land  is  to  the  owner  a  ball  and  chain 
which  bind  him  to  poorly  requited  toil.  This  form  of 
holding  may  offer  an  example  of  the  miscarriage  of  ex-- 
treme  democracy. 

Over  against  these  grave  losses  are  to  be  put  some 
very  palpable  gains,  the  independence  and  self-sup- 
porting character  of  the  peasantry,  the  large  aggregate 
amount  of  their  earnings,  and  their  conservative  chap 
acter  as  citizens.  We  shall  meet  with  very  different 
descriptions  of  the  French  peasantry  according  as  at' 
tention  is  directed  to  their  social  character,  or  to  theii 
economic  strength.  While  they  are  "  penurious,  patient 
and  frugal,"  they  are  stolid,  superstitious,  and  cruel,  and 
their  lives  revolve  in  a  very  narrow  circle.  The  same 
author  may  speak  of  them  as  ignorant  and  superstitious, 
and  as  industrious  and  independent.1 

The  more  desirable  form  of  holdings  is  that  in  which 
moderate  farms  predominate,  but  are  united  with  small 
farms  and  with  a  few  large  ones.  The  large  ones  serve 
to  awaken  enterprise,  give  instruction,  and  establish 
standards.  The  small  ones  offer  rounds  in  the  laddei 
of  social  progress,  and  help  the  farm-hand  to  climb  out 
of  a  permanently  servile  position. 

§  5.  The  ownership  of  land  is  a  prominent  point  of 
attack  in  social  theories.  The  most  sweeping  of  these 
theories  is  Socialism,  assuming  various  forms.  Though 
it  is  supported  by  many  other  considerations,  it  draws  an 
initiatory  and  most  telling  argument  from  man's  relation 

1  "  France  of  To-day,"  Miss  Edwards. 


176  ECONOMICS. 

to  the  soil.  It  is  urged  that  the  soil,  like  air  and  water, 
is  a  common  gift  to  man.  If  ownership  is  allowed  to 
extend  to  land,  this  ownership  ultimately  subjects  the 
mass  of  men  to  those  who  have  acquired  the  soil  and 
the  capital  associated  with  it.  Men  cannot  preserve  their 
independence,  nor,  in  an  extreme  case,  the  bare  possibility 
of  existence  on  these  terms. 

It  is  also  urged  that  the  value  which  ultimately  at- 
taches to  land  is  not  the  result  of  the  labor  of  those 
holding  it,  but  the  fruit  of  the  conjoint  labors  of  all. 
This  increment  in  the  hands  of  the  landlord  is  un- 
earned. Ownership  in  land  is  not,  therefore,  permis- 
sible, because  land  is  the  common  term  of  prosperity, 
and  because  its  value,  as  a  productive  agent,  is  the 
fruit  of  joint  development. 

This  argument  extends  to  fixed  capital,  partly  from 
a  parity  of  reasons  and  partly  from  its  inseparable  asso- 
ciation with  soil.  The  argument  is  summed  up  in  the 
assertion  that  the  necessary  means  of  subsistence  must 
belong  to  all,  and  be  held  subject  to  the  common  wel- 
fare. To  concede  an  appropriation  of  these  means  of 
life  by  private  enterprise  is  to  incur  the  possibility  of 
the  entire  dependence  of  the  many  on  the  few,  and  to 
reach  the  actuality  of  bitter  poverty  in  the  rank  and 
file  of  men.  The  general  welfare  is  a  conjoint  consid- 
eration, and  must  be  provided  for  collectively.1 

Socialism  demands  attention  because  of  the  ability 
and  virtue  of  many  of  those  who  advocate  it,  because 
it  aims  at  what  all  effort  should  aim  at,  the  public 
welfare,  and  because  it  pushes  into  the  foreground  one 
of*  the  two  elements  which  hold  each  other  in  equi- 
librium in  prosperous  society,  collectivism.  Many  of 
i  "Socialism  and  Social  Reform,"  R,  T.  Ely. 


SOCIALISM.  177 

the  incidental  aims  and  tendencies  of  Socialism  are  pre- 
vailing, and  are  sure  to  make  still  greater  way  for  them- 
selves in  the  future. 

Socialism  is  formidable  because  of  its  appeal  to  a 
large  class  of  philanthropic  persons,  because  it  gets  to 
itself  leaders  of  energy  and  devotion,  and  at  the  same 
time  gathers  a  crowd  of  those  who  are  failing  to  unite 
themselves  profitably  to  society  in  its  existing  form. 
Many  obscure,  restless,  and  troubled  thoughts,  many 
kindly  and  correct  sentiments,  cluster  at  this  centre. 
A  small  percentage  of  just  claims  gives  color  to  all. 

The  chief  tenets  of  Socialism,  in  its  most  consistent 
form,  are  the  ownership  by  the  state  of  all  productive 
agents,  equal  returns  for  equal  amounts  of  labor  meas- 
ured in  time,  a  recognition  of  the  time  involved  in  a 
preparation  for  difficult  forms  of  labor  as  well  as  of  the 
time  expended  in  them.  Socialism  is  designed  to  set 
aside  competition,  to  anticipate  the  power  which  men 
gain  over  each  other  in  the  progress  of  production,  to 
provide  common  and  equal  conditions  of  comfort  for  all. 
Private  property  remains  in  the  appropriation  of  the  re- 
turns of  labor,  waiting  consumption ;  private  enterprise 
remains  in  the  industry  which  accumulates  these  returns ; 
and  retribution  remains  in  the  want  which  accompanies 
indolence.  In  these  particulars  it  separates  itself  from 
Communism.  Mr.  Gronlund  puts  it  .in  his  "  Co-operative 
Commonwealth,"  in  this  form.  "  Everybody  according 
to  his  deeds,  is  Socialism.  Everybody  according  to  his 
needs,  is  Communism." 

Socialism  owes  its  origin  to  Saint  Simon,  Eourier,  and 
Owen  at  the  opening  of  the  present  century,  and  its 
systematic    development  to  Karl   Rodbertus    and  Karl 


178  ECONOMICS. 

Marx.1  In  this  country  Mr.  Gronlund  has  been  its  most 
thoughtful,  and  Mr.  Bellamy  its  most  popular,  advocate. 

The  errors  of  Socialism  are  unmistakable.  It  breaks 
with  history.  It  discloses  no  adequate  sense  of  the  slow, 
instinctive,  organic  tendencies  involved  in  the  devel- 
opment of  society,  and  supposes  that  wide  and  rapid 
changes  are  possible  to  it.  This  error  is  so  fundamental 
that  it  carries  with  it  many  others.  Reason  builds  itself 
up  in  human  life  and  in  society  on  a  basis  of  necessary, 
half-conscious,  organic  actions.  It  can  extend  and  sus- 
tain itself  in  no  other  way.  Thus,  in  the  body  of  man, 
the  strictly  instinctive  connections  of  stimuli  and  muscu- 
lar actions  prepare  the  way  for  and  support  voluntary 
effort.  Socialism  does  not  connect  its  proposed  action 
with  existing  tendencies  and  predilections  otherwise  than 
by  extended  modification  and  overthrow.  It  does  not 
rest  on  existing  constructive  agencies,  putting  upon  them 
the  slight  changes  they  are  prepared  to  accept,  but  treats 
them  heroically. 

Socialism  lays  chief  emphasis  on  organism  as  opposed 
to  inner  life.  Organism  is  of  much  moment,  but  is 
utterly  inefficacious  without  the  impulses  appropriate  to 
it.  It  may  do  something  in  calling  out  the  needed  sup- 
porting sentiments,  but  not  very  much.  The  eternal 
order  of  growth  is  inner  life  shaping  outward  forms,  and 
outward  forms  ministering  to  inner  life.  Society,  acting 
collectively,  can  never  be  in  advance  of  the  sentiments 
of  the  mass  of  its  citizens,  nor,  indeed,  in  its  consecra- 
tion to  the  public  welfare  quite  up  with  them.  Inertia 
and  the  lack  of  adaptation  to  the  new  method  will  retard 
it  somewhat.     Collective  action  is  more  obscure,  more 

1  Pres.  E.  B.  Andrews,  Journal  of  Political  Economy,  No.  1. 


SOCIALISM.  179 

provocative  of  selfish  impulses,  than  individual  action. 
It  is  subject  to  a  larger  chapter  of  accidents,  and  each 
accident  brings  more  extended  confusion.  No  penal 
methods,  no  reformative  methods,  no  administrative 
methods,  are  habitually  sustained  at  the  mark  which  the 
mass  of  citizens  would  desire  to  have  them  reach.  They 
all  suffer  a  painful  infusion  of  evil  from  the  less  virtu- 
ous portion  of  the  community.  It  is  folly,  therefore,  to 
suppose  that  society  can  organize  itself  into  virtue.  Vice 
is  sure  to  win  something  more  than  its  full  proportion 
of  influence  in  the  conjoint  product.  Whatever  truth 
there  may  be  in  Socialism,  neither  it  nor  any  other  sys- 
tem can  carry  the  state  by  storm.  It,  in  common  with 
all  improvements,  must  creep  slowly  along  the  paths  of 
individual  virtue. 

Socialism  cuts  deeply  into  individualism.  "We  may 
fully  recognize  the  part  that  organism  is  ultimately  to 
play  in  society,  and  still  see  that  its  nearness  and  its 
success  are  wholly  dependent  on  the  antecedent  develop- 
ment of  individualism.  Personal  power  is  the  promise 
of  all  true  nationalism,  and  its  permanent  term.  The 
body  of  man  can  become  increasingly  organic  only  as 
its  several  parts  are  increasingly  specialized.  Speciali- 
zation and  organization  forever  supplement  each  other. 
Neither  can  progress  without  the  other. 

Socialism  would  fail  at  once,  or  at  once  lead  to  unen- 
durable tyranny.  Lacking  the  intrinsic  impulses  in 
men's  minds  needful  to  support  it,  contending  with  the 
ignorance,  selfishness,  and  wilfulness  of  individuals,  it 
must  begin  immediately  to  sustain  itself  by  abitrary  acts 
of  power.  It  must  look  to  those  who  have  it  in  hand 
for  success.     Its  leaders,  like  the  leaders  in  the  French 


180  ECONOMICS. 

Revolution,  could  hesitate  at  nothing  in  support  of  a  good 
cause.  There  is  no  tyranny  so  sweeping  as  the  tyranny 
of  dictatorial  righteousness. 

The  devices  of  Socialism,  by  which  it  undertakes  at 
once  to  displace  all  the  accumulated  motives  and  familiar 
methods  of  private  enterprise,  must,  under  the  magni- 
tude of  the  work  put  upon  them,  ignominiously  fail. 
Inequalities,  in  their  many  pertinacious  and  inevitable 
forms,  cannot  be  pushed  aside  in  favor  of  equalities,  with 
no  sufficient  ground  in  the  powers  of  men  or  in  their 
social  attainments.  Society  can  no  more  order  its  own 
life  directly  and  finally  by  its  own  counsel  than  an  indi- 
vidual can  alter  his  stature,  or  circulate  his  blood,  or  di- 
gest his  dinner,  by  giving  attention  to  them.  The  wisest 
and  most  considerate  men  could  only  approximate  jus- 
tice in  constructing  a  theory  of  wages.  Many  would 
be  as  thoroughly  dissatisfied  with  such  a  theory,  in  its 
practical  application,  as  they  are  now  discontented  with 
the  existing  state  of  things.  A  perfect  conception  of 
justice  has  not  yet  been  reached,  and  —  of  much  more 
moment  —  it  is  not  sustained  so  far  as  it  is  present  by 
the  feelings  of  men.     It  must  rest  back  on  force. 

Moreover,  Socialism  robs  a  man  of  himself.  If  a  man 
belongs  to  himself  —  and  if  not,  to  whom  does  he  belong 
—  then  his  powers  belong  to  him,  and  the  advantages 
which  these  powers,  under  legitimate  restraints,  may 
confer  upon  him  in  production.  Socialism  starts  with  a 
perfectly  arbitrary  act,  a  surgery  that  cuts  every  man 
down  to  standard  dimensions.  The  rewards  of  labor  are 
made  the  same  for  all,  under  a  rough  estimate  of  time. 
The  individual  producer  is  not  only  robbed  by  this 
method  of  his  powers,  he  is  robbed  of  the  most  natural 
and  direct  motives  for  their  adequate  exercise. 


A    SINGLE   TAX.  181 

The  argument  against  a  socialistic  tendency  which  is 
most  immediately  unanswerable  is  that  it  has  often  been 
tried,  in  simple  and  crude  forms,  by  a  select  few,  and 
has  uniformly  and  quickly  failed.  It  has  shown  no 
organic  force,  and  been  found  unworkable.  The  few 
apparent  exceptions  to  this  assertion  are  referable  to 
some  overruling  impulse  —  as  the  organic  power  of  re- 
ligion—  which  has  destroyed  the  force  of  the  experi- 
ment as  a  purely  social  one.  The  right  method  of 
initiating  any  form  of  Socialism  is  this  of  narrow  ger- 
minant  communities,  enlarging  in  their  circumference  by 
their  own  constructive  force.  The  attempt  has  often 
been  made  by  those  much  in  earnest,  and  has  as  often 
miscarried.  The  needful  motives,  the  spontaneous  im- 
pulses, the  habitual  ways,  were  not  present.  If  an  evolu- 
tionary Socialism  is  urged,  as  enforced  by  Marx,  it  ceases 
to  be  a  system  practically,  and  resolves  itself  into  a 
series  of  measures,  each  to  be  settled,  as  at  any  one 
time  proffered,  on  its  own  merits.1 

Free  discussion,  a  ready  adoption  of  feasible  reforms, 
a  prompt  suppression  of  violence,  will  not  only  render 
Socialism  innoxious,  they  will  make  it  productive  of 
good. 

§  G.  A  second  social  theory  associated  with  land,  and 
of  current  interest,  is  that  of  "  a  single  tax."  The  lead- 
ing advocate  of  this  view  is  Henry  George.2  It  is  a 
socialistic  idea  applied  simply  to  land.  It  is  sustained 
by  somewhat  similar  considerations:  that  land  is  a  com- 
mon inalienable  gift ;  that  all,  as  a  condition  of  safety, 

1  "  Progress  and  Poverty ;  "  "  Social  Problems ;  "  "  The  Land  Ques- 
tion." 

2  "Socialism,  New  and  Old,"  Wm.  Graham,  p.  126. 


182  ECONOMICS. 

must  have  access  to  it ;  that  it  has  been  wrongfully  ap- 
propriated by  a  few  ;  that  its  present  value  is  an  unearned 
increment.  To  these  arguments  are  added  the  great  op- 
pression and  injustice  involved  in  our  present  methods 
of  taxation,  and  the  ease  with  which  the  burden  would 
be  borne  if  it  were  once  laid  upon  land.  The  rent  of 
land  would,  it  is  thought,  be  quite  sufficient  to  perma- 
nently endow  the  state.1 

The  reasons  against  this  measure  are  first,  the  insuffi- 
ciency of  the  reasons  for  it.  It  is  not  true  that  every 
man  wishes  or  needs  access  to  the  land  in  ownership. 
The  wishes  and  wants  of  men  both  admit,  and  that  fre- 
quently, of  entire  indifference  to  land,  as  they  do  to  any 
other  one  form  of  ownership.  Many  men,  especially  in 
cities,  are  in  no  way  embarrassed  by  the  absence  of 
ownership  in  land ;  and  even  in  the  case  of  the  poor, 
the  gist  of  the  difficulty  is  rarely  found  in  this  especial 
lack.  Moreover,  the  proposed  change,  in  opening  land 
to  all,  robs  the  possession,  by  greatly  limiting  its  range, 
of  much  of  the  attraction  and  productive  power  that  it 
now  has.  As  a  motive  to  effort,  its  aggregate  force 
would  be  weakened  rather  than  strengthened.  Land 
would  become  to  us  all  much  what  the  highway  now  is, 
an  object  of  indifference. 

The  wrong  which  has  entered  into  the  acquisition  of 
land  no  more  invalidates  existing  titles  than  do  the 
frauds  of  the  past  destroy  other  claims.  Society  does 
make,  and  must  make,  peace  with  itself  in  all  directions. 
The  increment  in  land  is  hardly  more  unearned,  in  the 
majority  of  cases,  than  the  increment  which  is  sure  to 
accompany   other   forms   of  prosperity.     The   attention 

1  Thomas  G.  Shearman,  Forum,  vol,  viii.  p.  40. 


A   SINGLE  TAX.  183 

of  Henry  George  was  drawn  to  land  by  the  presence  of 
very  striking  and  very  exceptional  circumstances.  The 
sudden  development  of  an  entire  State,  like  California, 
the  rapid  growth  of  a  great  city,  like  Chicago,  are  at- 
tended by  an  appreciation  of  land  which  may  confer 
great  wealth  with  little  productive  labor.  Much  the 
larger  share,  however,  of  these  gains  —  and  law  may 
well  interfere  to  make  the  rule  universal  —  are  widely 
scattered  and  accrue  to  the  community  at  large,  the 
very  community  whose  enterprise  and  good  fortune 
have  given  occasion  to  them.  Most  of  the  rise  in  the 
value  of  farm-lands  in  the  West  has  been  the  reward  of 
the  sacrifices  incident  to  settling  a  new  country,  and 
have  been  advantageously  distributed  among  those  who 
have  borne  this  burden  of  self-denial. 

The  merchant  and  the  manufacturer  and  the  laborer 
have  shared  this  prosperity,  and  have  enjoyed  an  incre- 
ment due  to  the  general  welfare,  not  as  distinct,  indeed, 
but  as  certain,  as  that  of  the  land  owner. 

The  existing  evils  of  taxation  are  fully  admitted,  but 
do  not  justify  the  wrong  involved  in  the  proposed  rem- 
edy. The  injustice  of  the  remedy  would  be  simply  the 
fruition  of  the  injustice  present  in  the  evils. 

A  positive  and  unanswerable  objection  to  a  single  tax 
is  that  it  involves  confiscation,  and  that  too,  in  many 
instances,  of  property  in  the  hands  of  a  most  diligent 
and  frugal  class.  The  scheme  would  meet  with  little 
favor  if  the  appropriation  of  rents  involved  a  previous 
purchase  of  the  lands  from  which  they  arise.  In  that 
case,  whatever  advantages  have  accrued  from  land  as 
now  held,  would  demand  recognition  and  compensation. 
But  if  the  rent  of  land  is  to  be  appropriated  by  the  state 


184  ECONOMICS. 

by  virtue  of  its  superior  power,  we  commit  and  suffer 
an  injustice  so  radical  and  unprecedented  as  greatly  to 
weaken  social  ties  and  unsettle  the  notion  of  obliga- 
tion. 

From  this  plundering  proeess  there  would  be  no  es- 
cape for  those  subjected  to  it.  The  single  tax  would 
fall  on  a  limited  class,  and  would  be  incapable  of  diffu- 
sion. Under  favoring  circumstances  taxes  may  be 
widely  spread  through  the  community,  and  rest  but 
lightly  on  those  who  pay  them.  If  a  commodity  can  be 
successfully  raised  in  price,  then  a  tax  on  that  commod- 
ity can  be  made  to  pass  over  to  the  purchaser  in  a 
measure  determined  by  the  vigor  of  the  demand.  If  the 
land  whose  rent  had  been  appropriated  remained  in  the 
hands  of  the  holder  who  had  suffered  the  loss,  he  could 
not  recoup  his  damages  by  raising  the  value  of  the  land 
or  by  raising  the  price  of  its  produce.  The  land  re- 
mains an  unchangeable  amount,  and  the  demand  for  it 
would  be  decreased  rather  than  increased  by  the  disad- 
vantageous terms  under  which  it  was  held.  Moreover, 
it  is  the  purpose  of  the  state  to  do  its  work  thoroughly, 
and  any  rise  or  fall  in  the  land  would  simply  vary  the 
single  tax.  It  is  the  purpose  of  the  state  to  lay  the 
land  open  to  all,  and  to  this  end  to  strip  the  holder  of 
any  peculiar  advantage.  The  price  of  produce  could  not 
be  advanced,  for  that  depends  on  a  supply  and  demand 
settled  independently  of  rent.  Lands  not  bearing  rent 
define  the  supply,  and  these  would  remain  unaffected 
by  a  single  tax.  As  rent  arises  simply  from  a  natural 
advantage,  the  appropriation  of  rent  is  the  appropria- 
tion of  that  advantage,  and  the  attendant  loss  cannot 
be  escaped.      The    case  is  much  the  same  in  building- 


A    SINGLE  TAX.  185 

lots.  These  stand  for  a  value  whose  terms  are  compara- 
tively unchangeable,  and  which  admits  of  complete  ap- 
propriation if  the  state  so  wills.  Whatever  portion  the 
public  may  take  to  itself,  the  remainder  is  not  altered 
thereby.  The  circumstances  affecting  the  value  of  the 
lands  remain  the  same.  The  question  is  simply  one 
of  ownership. 

The  community,  by  taking  to  itself  all  lands,  loses 
thereby  a  very  general  and  very  important  incentive  to 
industry.  The  ownership  of  land  appeals  strongly  to 
many,  and  calls  forth  strenuous  productive  effort. 

"We  are  to  remember  also  that  it  was  economic  im- 
pulses, progressive,  social  movements,  that,  in  the  out- 
set, broke  up  a  common  ownership  of  land.  Any 
injustice  that  accompanied  the  measure  was  incidental 
rather  than  fundamental.  To  restore  this  relation,  or 
one  approximating  it,  would  be  a  retreat  in  the  produc- 
tive power  of  the  community,  with  no  redress  of  the 
earlier  wrongs.  Progressive  impulses  would  either  a 
second  time  break  up  this  unfavorable  form  of  owner- 
ship, or  be  constantly  embarrassed  by  it.  A  single  tax 
is  thoroughly  retrogressive  and  unhistoric.  The  triune 
life  of  industry  is  made  up  of  agriculture,  manufacture, 
and  commerce.  The  decisive  development  of  any  one 
of  these  tends  powerfully  to  separate  them  all,  and  to 
subject  each  of  them  to  its  own  peculiar  impulses.  Safe 
and  wise  adjustments  in  society  lie  before  us  rather  than 
behind  us.  They  are  found  in  retaining  what  has  been 
done  and  in  carrying  it  forward  one  stage  farther. 

In  our  effort  to  escape  existing  difficulties  and  present 
injustice,  we  should  give  occasion,  by  a  single  tax,  to 
greater  difficulties  and  a  wholly  new  crop  of  injustices. 


186  ECONOMICS. 

This  spirit  of  confiscation  is,  to  begin  with,  a  very  arbi- 
trary one,  and  would  be  met  at  once  with  the  deli- 
cate task  of  determining  what  is  just  and  unjust  in  a 
thousand  obscure  cases.  Any  failure  here  would  be 
softened  by  none  of  the  ameliorations  of  custom,  but 
stand  out  as  a  fresh  and  aggravated  wrong.  In  shifting 
our  harness  to  relieve  existing  pressure,  we  should  pass 
through  a  stage  of  sharp  friction,  and  at  length  reach  a 
callous  state  no  better  than  the  one  we  had  left  behind 
us.  Changing  the  figure,  we  should  be  as  one  who 
ploughs  a  refractory  field  whose  stones  had  been  care- 
fully picked  up.  We  should  be  compelled  to  repeat  the 
labor  with  results  of  the  old  order. 

Our  exaction  would  impose  a  severe  burden  on  agri- 
culture, and  through  it  on  all  branches  of  industry.  We 
should  have  established  rent  as  the  universal  tenure,  of 
all  tenures  the  one  least  favorable  to  enterprise  and 
most  difficult  of  adjustment.  The  mere  fact  that  the 
state  was  the  common  landlord  would  not  remove  these 
embarrassments  ;  it  might  readily  enhance  them.  One 
cannot  adjust  his  relations  to  the  state  as  readily  as  he 
can  to  persons.  We  should  be  compelled  to  determine 
in  each  instance  the  ownership  of  betterments,  the  parti- 
tion of  the  profits  incident  to  them,  and  the  motives  by 
which  they  are  to  be  secured.  Complete  individual  own- 
ership settles  these  difficult  considerations  in  the  most 
direct  and  satisfactory  way. 

When  our  scheme  had  gone  into  operation,  we  should 
have  given  sudden  relief  from  taxation  to  manufacture 
and  commerce.  These,  for  the  moment,  would  feel  the 
elation.  But  the  entire  burden  being  passed  over  to  land, 
agriculture  would    be  correspondingly   depressed.     The 


A   SINGLE  TAX.  187 

purchasing  power  of  a  large  portion  of  the  community 
would  be  greatly  reduced,  to  the  damage  of  the  remain- 
ing portion.  There  would  be  an  effort  to  escape  from 
this  unfortunate  branch  of  labor.  The  injury,  at  first 
special,  would  quickly  extend  through  the  community. 
When,  after  a  series  of  years,  all  should  have  adjusted 
themselves  to  the  new  conditions,  few  would  be  aware 
of  any  relief.  The  results  of  the  injury  would  remain, 
while  its  immediate  advantages  would  have  disappeared. 
An  unprofitable  struggle  would  have  been  occasioned  to 
secure  a  new  equilibrium  in  no  way  superior  to  the  old 
one. 

This  statement  is  not  inconsistent  with  the  previous 
one,  that  a  single  tax  could  not  be  evaded  by  those  on 
whom  it  should  fall.  It  is  simply  saying  that  a  severe 
injury  inflicted  on  a  portion  of  a  community  is  sure  to 
extend  to  all.  Agriculture  would  level  itself  up  again 
with  other  callings  by  slowly  levelling  down  commerce 
and  manufacture.  The  losses  would  be  distributed 
through  all  three  departments  by  the  efforts  of  the 
agriculturists  to  escape  their  own  hard  terms.  A  proxi- 
mate level  would  be  reached,  but  one  lower  than  that  on 
which  we  now  stand. 

A  single  tax,  as  a  reform  measure,  is  revolutionary. 
There  are  no  intermediate  stages  by  which  the  commu- 
nity would  grow  into  the  change,  and  the  concussion  be 
reduced.  It  is  strengthened,  as  a  theory,  by  an  obscure 
restless  feeling  which  leads  many  to  exaggerate  existing 
evils,  and  grasp  at  any  proffered  relief  with  no  careful 
tracing  of  results.  It  is  not  unlike  that  blind  hankering 
after  an  inflated  currency,  giving  new  and  improved 
conditions    of    prosperity.       No    one    who    thoroughly 


188  ECONOMICS. 

understands  how  organic  a  thing  society  is,  how  few 
and  slight  are  the  changes  profitable  to  it,  will  be  likely 
to  advocate  any  of  these  heroic  remedies  which  bear 
those  sure  marks  of  quackery  —  precipitancy  and  cer- 
tainty. 

We  also  do  well  to  remember  that  we  have  no  experi- 
ence of  extended  and  prosperous  agriculture  along  this 
line  of  public  control.  The  Mir,  or  Parish  Council  in 
Russia,  directs  the  distribution  of  arable  land  with  most 
unfavorable  results.  USTijui  shows  signs  of  permanent 
exhaustion,  and  recent  severe  famines  are  attributed  in 
part  to  the  substitution  of  this  collective  forecast  for 
individual  thrift.  The  general  intelligence  is  a  reser- 
voir that  can  by  no  possibility  rise  higher  than  the 
fountains  of  personal  enterprise,  and  will  in  most  cases 
be  found  very  sensibly  lower  than  these  sources  of 
supply. 

The  discussion  to  which  a  single  tax  has  given  rise 
may  very  well  subserve  the  purpose  of  reimpressing 
upon  us  the  evils  which  have  grown  up  with  the  owner- 
ship of  land,  and  predispose  us  to  their  correction. 
Land  has  been  made  especially  difficult  of  transfer,  and 
by  law  and  by  custom  has  been  retained  in  the  hands  of 
a  few  as  a  class  distinction.  No  effort  should  be  spared 
to  make  it  thoroughly  fluent.  The  economic  reasons  for 
accepting  ownership  in  land  are  completely  operative 
only  in  connection  with  ready  exchange.  Titles  tested 
and  guaranteed  under  the  Australian  method  greatly 
facilitate  transfer. 

There  is  no  good  reason  why  the  control  of  land 
should  be  extended  over  a  long  period.  Two  genera- 
tions since,  the    evidences    of    title    in  England    might 


A    SINGLE  TAX.  189 

reach  back  a  half  dozen  centuries,  and  the  owner  of 
land  still  controls,  directly  or  indirectly,  the  transfer  of 
lands  many  years  after  his  death.  It  is  sufficient  that  a 
man  should  enjoy  his  own  life  ;  he  should  withdraw  his 
too  eager  hand  from  the  activities  of  those  who  come 
after  him.  The  tendency  which  civil  law  is  showing 
to  restrict  the  entail  of  land  and  long  rentals  may  well 
pass  to  its  logical  conclusion.  The  perpetuity  in  owner- 
ship of  land  grew  naturally  with  the  perpetuity  of  the 
family.  The  economic  forces  have  penetrated  these 
double  organic  defences  but  slowly.  Among  the  Ro- 
mans, adoption  into  the  family  was  an  early  means  of 
transferring  property.  Later  the  right  to  will  it  gained 
ground,  and  received  in  English  law  most  unreasonable 
extension.  A  power  so  completely  conferred  by  law 
may  well  be  made  entirely  amenable  to  the  public 
welfare.  The  old  agglutinative  tendency  of  land  in  the 
community,  in  the  family,  in  persons,  should  be  com- 
pletely broken  up.  This  is  the  present  direction  of 
social  and  economic  forces,  and  its  entire  accomplish- 
ment would  remove  a  heavy  remainder  of  evils. 

It  would  not  be  an  unreasonable  measure,  would  lie 
in  the  line  of  a  portion  of  our  policy  in  the  disposal 
of  the  public  lands,  and  would  tend  to  make  land  more 
perfectly  responsive  under  social  forces,  to  restrict  the 
amount  to  be  held  by  any  one  person  or  corporation. 
"While  the  United  States  has,  for  the  most  part,  held  the 
public  domain  subject  to  the  interests  of  actual  settlers, 
it  has  traversed  this  commendable  policy  by  large  grants 
to  railroads.  Some  States  have  forbidden  the  holding 
of  land  by  aliens. 

A    thorough    reconsideration    and    reconstruction    of 


100  ECONOMICS. 

taxes  are  called  for  as  a  means  of  escaping  present  rest* 
lessness  under  them,  and  of  reducing  the  disposition  to 
transfer  them,  irrespective  of  justice,  to  some  new 
point.  The  single-tax  derives  much  of  its  force  from 
the  present  bad  forms  of  taxation.  "We  are  as  one  who 
drives  a  train  of  well-broken  and  of  refractory  mules. 
The  burdens  are  placed,  not  where  they  belong,  but  on 
the  backs  that  bear  them  most  submissively.  Real 
estate  is  least  able  to  evade  taxes,  and  so  it  becomes  the 
catch-all  of  the  indolent  law-giver.  The  single-tax  has 
the  merit  and  demerit  of  reducing  this  iniustice  to 
a  system. 


CHANGES  IN  FORM  OF  MANUFACTURE.     191 


CHAPTER   IV. 
MANUFACTURE 

§  1.  While  the  three  branches  of  production  stand 
in  reciprocal  dependence  on  one  another,  changes  in  man- 
ufacture more  frequently  initiate  progress,  and  are  the 
occasion  of  development  in  agriculture  and  commerce. 
Commerce  may  be  quickened  by  discovery,  as  was  the 
early  commerce  of  England  and  Holland,  but  its  per- 
manent support  is  found  in  the  extent  and  variety  of 
manufactures. 

Since  the  middle,  of  the  eighteenth  century,  there  has 
been  in  England  and  in  the  more  advanced  states  of 
Eiirope  a  remarkable  growth  of  productive  power,  with 
a  corresponding  change  of  society.  This  fact  is  a  most 
interesting  phenomenon,  and  one  particularly  worthy  of 
study  as  a  guide  in  the  future.  "We  live  in  compara- 
tively a  new  world,  on  different  terms  with  our  fellows, 
and  have  occasion  for  methods  and  principles  corre- 
spondingly distinct. 

The  ground  of  this  transformation  has  been  innumer- 
able discoveries  and  inventions,  redirecting  and  greatly 
increasing  productive  power.  While  invention  has  re- 
duced the  labor  involved  in  any  given  product,  it  has 
constantly  increased  the  value  of  the  plant.  Machin- 
ery has  steadily  grown  in  complexity  and  cost,  has 
demanded  a  corresponding  increase  of  capital,  and  has 
given   it  a  proportionate   importance  in  the  productive 


192  ECONOMICS. 

process.  The  relation  of  the  two  terms,  labor  and  capi- 
tal, has  been  widely  altered  in  reference  to  each  other. 
Many  incidental  advantages  incident  to  magnitude  in 
production  have  wrought  in  the  same  direction.  Divis- 
ion of  labor  is  more  complete.  Material  is  used  with* 
greater  economy.  Remainders,  which  in  small  amounts 
would  be  simply  waste,  are  made  profitable.  Oversight 
and  management  are  superior  in  kind  and  greatly  ex- 
tended. Purchases  and  sales  are  more  advantageously 
made.  Lighter  rates  aggregate  into  larger  profits. 
These  all  unite  to  secure  the  concentration  of  produc- 
tion in  single  places  and  large  establishments. 

Perhaps  no  one  fact  has  worked  more  powerfully  in 
this  direction  than  the  increasing  reliance  on  steam  as 
a  motor.  Steam,  indifferent  to  locality,  lends  itself  to 
production  in  any  desired  amount,  and  the  more  readily 
in  large  amounts.  The  present  extension  in  the  use  of 
electricity  as  a  motor  will  favor  a  subdivision  of  force, 
and  its  adaptation  to  smaller,  more  isolated  forms  of 
production. 

As  a  consequence  of  these  changes,  manufacture  has 
lost  almost  wholly  its  early  domestic  character,  and 
proceeds  only  at  great  centres  of  labor.  Even  the  scat- 
tered production  that  remains  has  developed  special 
evils,  and  is  looked  on  with  disfavor.  The  lowest 
wages  and  the  worst  hygienic  conditions  are  usually 
found  in  homes  and  obscure  shops,  where,  as  in  the 
manufacture  of  ready-made  clothing,  dispersion  is  still 
possible.  Labor  is  now  rendered  under  more  favorable 
conditions  by  complying  with  the  new  method  than  by 
resisting  it.  The  absolute  character  of  a  social  change 
herein  discloses  itself.     The    immediate    social    results 


SOCIAL   LOSSES.  193 

have  been  hard  and  exacting  conditions  of  service  in  one 
class,  and  more  power  in  another  class. 

§  2.  Hardships,  some  of  them  transient,  some  of 
them  comparatively  permanent,  have  fallen  heavily  on 
the  working  classes.  Many  workmen  have  been  thrown t 
out  of  employment  by  the  introduction  of  machinery,  I 
have  lost  the  skill  and  wont  of  familiar  ways,  and 
have  been  exposed  to  severe  suffering  before  the  new 
resources  were  fully  open,  and  the  fresh  adaptations 
completely  made.  Hence  workmen,  as  in  England, 
have  looked  with  much  distrust  and  dislike  on  the  pro- 
gress of  invention,  and  often  destroyed  the  new  machin- 
ery.1 Though  these  changes  have  been  as  marked  in 
later  as  in  earlier  periods,  workmen  have  become  more 
flexible.  The  general  demand  for  labor  has  increased, 
and  the  sufferings  attendant  on  a  transfer  of  labor  have 
been  less  conspicuous.  The  working  of  steel  barsj 
directly  from  pig-iron  by  the  Bessemer  process  threw* 
out  of  emploj'ment  39,000  workmen.2 

There  has  been,  under  the  new  system,  less  separation 
of  different  forms  of  manufacture,  less  seclusion  of 
workmen,  less  es}>rit  de  corps,  fewer  personal  ties.  The 
guild,  with  its  social  relations,  was  broken  up.  The] 
kindly  dependence  of  master  and  apprentice  disap- 
peared, the  secrets  and  customs  of  a  trade  were  lost. 
These  combined  processes  of  production  passed  over 
the  workmen  like  a  steam  roller,  and  crushed  them  all 
down  into  one  dusty  highway  of  traffic.  Wage-earners, 
gathered  in  large  numbers,  lost  individuality ;  they  be- 
came   "the    hands."       This    tendency    completes    itself 

1  ''  History  of  the  Eighteenth  Century  in  England,"  vol.  vi.  p.  220. 

2  '  Subjects  of  Social  Welfare,"  Sir  Lyon  Playfair,  p.  140. 


194  ECONOMICS. 

when,  as  in  some  forms  of  railroad  service,  the  work- 
man, is  known  by  the  number  of  his  engine,  or  of  the 
car  to  which  he  is  attached.  As  Tom  was  a  sufficient 
designation  of  a  field-hand  of  old,  No.  65  answers  for 
the  car-driver  of  to-day. 

A  great  reduction  of  skill  in  workmen  as  a  whole  was 
involved  in  this  change.  The  increasing  subdivision  of 
labor  makes  the  demands  on  each  workman  compara- 
tively slight.  Whereas  the  old-fashioned  shoemaker 
made  the  entire  shoe  or  boot,  and  that  under  various 
forms,  the  workman  in  a  shoe-factory  may  perform  only 
one  of  sixty-four  processes,  into  which  the  making  of 
a  shoe  may  have  been  divided.1  The  intelligence  of  a 
few,  who  watch  over  the  machinery  and  direct  the  work, 
may  be  marked  ;  but  this  intelligence  is  vicarious,  and 
is  at  the  expense  of  the  intelligence  of  the  mass  of  the 
workmen. 

There  comes,  with  this  reduced  demand  on  the  work-j 
men,  a  reduced  hold  of  the  workmen  on  the  community] 
and  an  inferior  social  position.  Workmen  fall  into! 
masses,  and  drift  from  place  to  place.  An  inferior  classj 
displaces  a  superior  one.  This  result  has  been  especially 
conspicuous  in  New  England.  The  conditions  have 
almost  wholly  disappeared  which  called  out,  among  the 
operatives  of  Lowell,  The  Lowell  Offering,  with  Lucy 
Larcom  as  a  contributor.  A  factory  village  has  be- 
come the  receptacle  of  the  cheaper  forms  of  foreign 
labor. 

Corporate  power  has  grown  apace  under  this  transi- 
tion ;  small  and  intermediate  producers  have  been  wiped 
out.     The  distinction  between   the    employer  and    em- 

1  "  Recent  Economic  Changes,"  David  A.  "Wells,  p.  94. 


SOCIAL   LOSSES.  195 

ployee  has  become  greater,  and  far  more  difficult  to 
overcome.  Division  of  labor,  greatly  on  the  increase, 
has  reduced  the  importance  of  any  one  man,  and  has 
given  rise  to  the  tendency  to  treat  laborers  collectively  as 
a  class.  Personal  knowledge,  personal  interest,  personal 
responsibility,  become,  on  both  sides,  more  and  more 
impossible.  In  the  presence  of  expensive  machinery, 
whose  power  of  performance  is  prodigious,  and  whose 
gains  and  losses  are  correspondingly  great,  men,  insignif- 
icant individually  and  collectively  abundant,  are  thought 
lightly  of,  and  become  mere  adjuncts  of  the  more  weighty 
consideration. 

These  accumulations  of  power  tend  also  to  specula- 
tive methods.  Business  necessarily  involves  large  inter- 
ests and  incurs  great  risks.  A  free,  bold  handling  of 
production  occasionally  gives  startling  returns.  Men 
become  sanguine,  full  of  the  sense  of  power,  and  anx- 
ious to  reach  immediate  results.  They  are  made  dizzy 
by  the  whirl  of  business.  But  the  more  irresistible  and 
venturesome  is  the  general  movement,  the  more  thought- 
less of  others  and  the  more  cruel  do  those  become  who 
direct  it.  They  add  to  necessary  risks  needless  risks, 
and  accept  speculation  as  a  part  of  their  calling.  They 
have  no  power  to  care  for  others,  and  often  too  little 
power  to  care  for  themselves.  The  workman,  like  the  i 
common  soldier,  must  take  his  chances  and  bear  his  • 
wounds  with  patience. 

In  connection  with  this  great  diversity  of  power,  its 
growth   here   and    loss   there,   a   greedy  temper,  in   the 
earlier  portion  of  the  transition,  took  possession  of  man- 
ufacturers.    Labor    extended    to  fourteen   and   even   to  t 
sixteen  hours,  and  was  performed  by  women  and  chil- 


196  ECONOMICS. 

dren  wholly  unfit  for  it.  The  position  of  many  became 
utterly  abject,  with  no  power  of  recovery.  Parish  chil- 
dren were  let  out  in  lots,  the  capable  and  the  incapable.1 
Mere  infants  came  under  this  universal  exaction.  Re- 
mains of  this  oppression  are  still  found  in  remote 
places  and  backward  countries,  as  in  Hungary.  The 
sweating  system  is  its  expiring  progeny.  Machinery, 
incapable  of  fatigue,  and  enhancing  its  profits  in  its  last 
hours  of  service,  stole  in  on  the  lives  of  men  with  fear- 
ful tyranny,  and  with  its  iron  throb  took  the  place  of 
human  hearts.  Nor  were  men  quick  to  learn  that  the 
exhaustion  of  the  laborer  went  far  to  counterbalance 
the  iDexhaustible  strength  of  machinery. 

§  3.  A  complex  and  rapid  social  change,  like  the  one 
under  consideration,  while  it  may  result  in  some  great 
evils  by  breaking  down  previous  protective  customs, 
must  itself,  being  prompted  by  adequate  impulses,  con- 
tain at  least  the  possibility  of  new  social  growth. 
i  Though  the  eagerness  of  the  few,  getting  into  the  fore- 
ground, may  confuse  the  vision  of  men  and  obscure  the 
sense  of  right,  the  changes  in  the  methods  of  produc- 
tion still  remain  progressive  ones,  and  are  only  waiting 
for  the  assertion  of  new  moral  mastery  onT^TtPpart  of 
men  to  pour  wealth  into  the~g^h^raTTapT  These  im- 
provements come,  a  portion  of  them  inevitably,  and  a 
greater  portion  by  the  device  of  men. 

Labor  was  rapidly  absorbed  in  the  new  occupations, 
with  a  steady  increase  of  wages.  A  marked  example 
of  an  enlarged  demand  accompanied  the  introduction  of 
knitting-machines.      The  knitting    of    stockings    was    a  ( 

i  "  The  History  of  the  Eighteenth  Century  in  England,"  vol.  vi. 
p.  225. 


SOCIAL    GAINS.  197 

widely  diffused  industry,  which  adapted  itself  perfectly 
to  every  one's  leisure.     The  new  machines  seemed  about 
to   rob  very   many  of  occupation,  and  to  give  employ- 
ment to  a  few  only.     The  actual  result  was  much  more 
favorable.     These   machines   soon   occasioned   a  greatly  1 
extended   demand    for  labor,  reduced    the   resources  of| 
few,    and    gave    a   cheaper   product   to    all.1     Machine- 
countries,  as  England  and  the  United  States,  are  coun- 1 
tries  of  many  and  efficient  workmen,  of  high  wages,  and  | 
an  improved  standard  of  living. 

The  introduction  of  machinery  led  at  once  to  greatly* 
increased    production  and    correspondingly    low    prices.' 
AVorkmen  have  entered  fully  into  this  common  advan- 
tage.    Wages  have  been  raised  even  more  by  their  in- 
creased purchasing  power  than  by  a  nominal  advance. 
In  connection  with  improved  physical  conditions,  there 
have  come   improved    social    ones.     If    civilization,  the 
multiplication  of  the  appliances  of  life,  is  at  all  the  good 
we  take  it   to    be,  then    there    has   been  very    distinct 
progress  in  these  years  of  accelerated  production.     The 
restlessness    of  workmen  and    their  eagerness  for    still 
further  gains  are  themselves  evidence  of  this  awakened  J 
life. 

There  has  also  been  a  rapid  increase  of  population. 
The  population  of  England  and  AYales  in  17~>0  was  some 
6,000,000;  in  1800,  9,000,000;  and  in  1890,  26,000,000. 
This  increase  is  both  an  effect  and  a  cause  in  connection 
with  physical  development.  The  increase  of  production 
has  led  to  a  growth  of  population,  and  a  growth  of  popu- 
lation has  stimulated  production,  kept  full  the  channels 
of  labor,  and  made  new  enterprises  possible.  If  the 
1  "Kecent  Economic  Changes,"  p.  3(>7. 


198  ECONOMICS. 

general  judgment  is  right,  that  life  is  worth  living,  and 
the  higher  far  more  than  the  lower  forms,  then  the  in- 
crease of  numbers,  both  sharing  and  extending  civiliza- 
tion, is  a  real  gain.  In  1785  there  were  only  40,000 
persons  occupied  in  England  in  the  manufacture  of  cot- 
ton goods.  In  1831  the  number  had  grown  to  833,000. 
Nor  had  this  growth  been  at  the  expense  of  any  other 
industry.  In  1750  the  export  of  cotton  goods  was 
£45,000;  in  1833,  £18,500,000.!  Two  and  one-half 
millions  are  now  engaged  in  England  in  this  indus- 
try.2 

In  Brussels,  in  1846,  few  workmen  earned  more  than 
2  fr.,  50  c. ;  in  1891  few  earned  less  than  4  fr.,  50  c. 
If  one  hundred  be  taken  as  the  purchasing  power  of 
wages  in  1853,  in  Brussels  that  power  has  become,  in 
1891,  142.56.3 

With  these  material  gains,  there  have  come,  with  much 
contention  and  delay,  corresponding  social  ones.  The 
ewijs  which  were  at  first  developed  with  startling  rapid- 
ity under  the  increase  of  production  have  been  attacked 
in  order,  and^greatly  reduced.  Not  only  have  women 
and  children  been  taken  under  the  protection  of  law 
its  oversight  has  been  extended  to  the  general  conditions 
of  labor.  More  favorable  terms  of  comfort,  health,  and 
safety  are  attainable  in  connection  with  the  coneentra-l 
tion  of  labor  than  are  likely  to  be  present  while  itl 
remains  scattered  in  many  and  obscure  places.  Unne- 
cessary dangers  and  unwholesome  surroundings  can  be 
greatly  reduced  in  large  establishments.     The  possibil- 

1  "  History  of  the  Eighteenth   Century  in  England,"   vol.     vi 
p.  207-210. 

2  "  Recent  Economic  Changes,"  p.  368. 
8  The  Nation,  Dec.  22,  1892, 


I 


HOURS   OF  LABOR.  199 

ity  of  the  better  method  and  the  motive  to  it  grow  with 
the  growth  of  numbers.  Though  negligence  in  the  en- 
forcement of  law  and  resistance  to  it  may  remain,  they 
are  more  easily  overcome  in  large  and  relatively  public 
factories  than  in  smaller  ones.  The  accessories  of  social  \ 
comfort,  libraries,  reading-rooms,  clubs,  are  more  readily  / 
supplied. 

§  4.  The  one  movement  on  which  all  these  allevia- 
tions have  hinged,  more  than  on  any  other,  has  been  a 
reduction  in  the  hours  of  labor.  The  number  has  fallen  i 
in  England  to  nine  hours,  and  in  America  to  ten  hours.* 
On  the  Continent  it  remains  somewhat  higher,  and  in 
Russia  reaches  thirteen  hours.  There  is  not  absolute 
uniformity  in  any  country  in  the  hours  of  work,  and 
these  figures  express  a  rough  average.  There  is  a  very 
positive  push  in  England  to  secure  a  day  of  eight  hours, 
and  a  like,  though  a  less  persistent  effort,  in  this  coun- 
try. The  gains  of  reduced  hours  accrue  with  more  real 
advantage  to  workmen,  with  less  contention,  and  with 
less  disturbance  of  industry,  if  the  movement  is  irregu- 
lar, tentative,  and  pushed  in  different  branches  of  busi- 
ness as  circumstances  favor  it,  than  if  it  is  made  at  once 
all  along  the  line.  Reduced  hours  constitute  a  real 
social  victory  for  workmen  only  as  they  are  secured 
without  loss  of  wages,  and  are  accompanied  by  a  dispo- 
sition to  profit  by  the  leisure  granted.  The  economic 
and  the  moral  considerations  must  sustain  each  other,  or 
the  gains  are  very  problematical. 

The  eight-hour  day,  ordered  by  Congress  in  1868,  was 
so  much  to  one  side  of  the  general  custom  and  temper 
of  the  community,  that  the  law  came  to  be  disregarded, 
and    gave   rise   to    later  claims  for  overwork.     Recent 


200  ECONOMICS. 

congresses   of   trade-unions    in  England  have   shown  a 
steady  growth  of  this  demand. 

The  question  of  the  proper  number  of  hours  in  a  day's 
labor  is  both  an  economic  and  a  social  one.  The  eco- 
nomic inquiry  is  directed  to  the  number  of  hours  which, 
in  the  long  run,  will  yield  the  largest  returns.  The 
answer  will  rest  on  the  amount  of  labor  which  is  con- 
sistent with  health,  with  the  best  execution,  with  the 
most  economical  production,  and  the  most  telling  incen- 
tives to  effort  —  average  persons  and  long  periods  being 
contemplated.  These  considerations  will  flow  into  each 
other.  Even  under  this  narrow  form  the  question  can- 
not be  answered  without  some  reference  to  social  rela- 
tions. Cheerful  and  enjoyable  social  surroundings 
nourish  physical  strength  and  increase  the  incentives 
to  effort.  Men  are  slow  to  learn  that  additional  time 
does  not  necessarily  give  additional  production.  The 
arithmetical  truth  that  twelve  is  more  than  ten  rules 
the  mind.  It  is  probable  that,  in  most  cases,  ten  hours 
somewhat  exceed  the  point  of  highest  productive  power. 
Mr.  Rogers  says,  "  I  am  sure  that  an  eight-hour  is  worth 
more  to  the  employer  than  a  ten-hour  day." 1  Recent 
experiments  and  recent  inquiries  lead  quite  positively 
to  a  similar  conclusion.2 

The  social  points  involved  in  an  eight-hour  day  are 
the  use  workmen  are  prepared  to  make  of  their  leisure, 
and  a  possible  increase  in  the  demand  for  labor  absorb- 
ing those  who  are  now  only  partially  occupied.  It  may 
be  said  that  in  meeting  the  claims  of  workmen  for  re- 
duced hours,  the  community  has  nothing  to  do  with  the 

1  "  Economic  Interpretation  of  History,"  pp.  353,  334,  308. 

2  "  Eight  Hours  for  Work,"  John  Rae. 


HOURS   OF  LABOR.  201 

uses  to  which  they  are  likely  to  put  their  liberty,  that 
the  liberty  itself  will  beget  superior  uses.  This  asser- 
tion, though  not  wholly  without  force,  overlooks  the 
social  harmony  which  must  make  our  action  fruitful, 
and  the  fact  that  a  concession  of  this  kind  should  spring 
from  good-will  and  beget  good-will.  If  grave  social  evils 
are  to  arise  from  it,  it  ought  for  this  reason  to  be  re- 
sisted. The  intelligence  and  good  character  of  work- 
men prepare  them  to  push  these  claims,  and  profit  by 
them  ;  they  will  also  go  very  far  to  make  them  success- 
ful when  secured.  A  negligent  and  careless  workman 
must  atone  for  the  remissness  of  his  labor  by  longer 
hours. 

Undoubtedly  the  reduction  of  the  hours  of  labor  will 
act  favorably  on  the  partially  employed,  but  indirectly 
rather  than  directly,  remotely  rather  than  immediately. 
If  it  should  prove  that  the  maximum  of  production  is 
consistent  with  eight  hours'  labor,  then  an  eight-hour 
day  would  give  rise  to  no  additional  demand  for  work. 
Its  effect  —  an  effect  of  more,  not  less,  moment  than  the 
expectation  of  immediate  employment  —  would  be  the 
secondary  but  permanent  one  of  general  prosperity.  At 
the  present  time  the  most  efficient  workmen  receive 
the  highest  wages  with  the  shortest  hours.  English 
and  American  workmen  render  more  efficient  service 
than  those  of  any  other  nation.  Ten  men  in  Germany, 
in  a  blast  furnace,  are  no  more  than  the  equivalent  of 
five  men  in  England.  Wages  are  eighty-four  per  cent 
higher  in  England  than  on  the  Continent,  but  the  gen- 
eral cost  of  production  is  thirty  per  cent  less.1  "  Pauper 
labor,"  and  labor  subjected  to  long  hours,  are  least  able 

i  "  Subjects  of  Social  Welfare,"  Sir  Lyon  Playfair,  144-1G0. 


202  ECONOMICS. 

to  compete  with  labor  well  paid  and  comparatively  in- 
dependent. 

This  increased  prosperity  of  workmen  necessarily 
gives  rise  to  increased  consumption,  and  consumption 
more  consistent  with  the  general  welfare.  This  con- 
sumption means  an  enlarged  demand  for  products,  and 
this  in  turn  Avidens  the  field  of  labor.  A  more  forti^ 
nate  set  of  adjustments  will  come  to  the  community  as  a 
whole,  and  these  will  open  more  paths  of  improvement. 

This  movement  toward  a  working-day  of  eight  hours 
is  so  thoroughly  organic,  involves,  and  in  turn  affects,  so 
many  interests,  that  it  should  be  reached  slowly,  with 
a  careful  adaptation  to  circumstances,  and  with  a  full 
opportunity  for  the  sustaining  reactions.  Different  em- 
ployments are  widely  different  in  the  strain  they  put 
upon  workmen,  and  also  in  the  strain  to  which  the  occu- 
pation itself  is  subjected  by  competition.  The  presence 
of  costly  machinery  modifies  the  problem.  When  the 
rooms  of  labor  are  heated  and  lighted,  and  the  propel- 
ling power  can  perform  more  work  with  slight  addi- 
tional expenditure,  the  last  hours  of  the  day  are,  as  far 
as  mechanical  conditions  are  concerned,  the  most  eco- 
nomical, and  materially  affect  the  balance  of  profits. 
These  considerations  may  make  the  acceptance  of  eight 
hours  peculiarly  difficult  at  some  points.  In  other  cases 
a  relay  of  hands,  with  eight  hours  for  each,  may  fall 
in  with  the  best  production. 

Even  in  the  use  of  machinery,  where  the  amount  of 
the  product  seems  to  depend  so  directly  on  mechanical 
conditions,  and  so  little  on  the  workman,  the  results 
of  shorter  hours  have  still  been  favorable.  The  per- 
sonal element  has  asserted  itself. 


HOUES   OF  LABOR.  203 

Farm-labor  offers  an  example  of  such  variable,  and  at 
the  same  time  favorable,  conditions  of  labor  as  to  render 
a  uniform  eight-hour  day  impossible  and  unnecessary. 
The  conditions  of  farm-work  are  so  wholesome  that 
the  laborer  readily  bears  more  hours  ;  and  the  claims 
of  farm-work  are  often  such  that  more  than  eight  hours 
must  be  granted.  This  reform,  like  most  reforms,  suf- 
fers from  the  artificial  pressure  under  which  it  is  se- 
cured. An  unduly  conservative  temper  does  not  check 
the  radical  temper,  but  suffices  to  make  it  destruc- 
tive. 

An  eight-hour  day  contemplates  no  reduction  of 
wages  and  no  overwork.  If  wages  are  reduced,  the 
condition  of  the  workman  will  ordinarily  become  less, 
not  more,  bearable.  Overwork  virtually  restores  the 
method  which  has  been  rejected.  A  short  day  readily 
unites  itself  to  the  ownership  of  a  home  and  a  lot, 
which  can  give  pleasant  and  profitable  occupation. 

Labor  in  Germany  has  greatly  encroached  on  the  rest 
of  Sunday,  as  has  also  the  railroad  service  in  this  coun- 
try and  other  countries.  Entirely  aside  from  any  spir- 
itual purposes,  Sunday  constitutes  a  most  desirable  and 
defensible  barrier  for  the  average  man  against  the  en- 
croachments of  business.  It  becomes,  therefore,  when 
the  customs  which  protect  Sunday  are  being  broken 
down,  a  serious  question  what  the  ultimate  effect  will 
be  on  the  workman's  mastery  of  his  life.  In  public 
concessions  and  amusements  this  is  a  vital  point.  A 
portion  of  the  community  are  liable  by  relaxation  in 
customs  to  come  under  claims  even  more  exacting  than 
those  of  ordinary  labor.  The  last  century,  in  its 
economic  history,  enforces  the    fact   that   any    marked 


204  ECONOMICS. 

changes  in  society  partially  destroy  old  safeguards, 
and  so  demand  the  construction  of  new  ones.  Our  re- 
adjustments should  be  wide  and  discriminating.  As 
a  matter  of  fact,  the  evils  developed  by  progress  are 
rarely  corrected  till  they  in  turn  become  unbearable. 


RAPIDITY  OF  COMMERCE.  205 


CHAPTER   V. 
COMMERCE. 

§  1.  Though  commerce  can  be  fed  only  by  production, 
it  is  often,  in  the  first  instance,  the  provoking  cause  of 
production,  and  always  reacts  strongly  upon  it.  The 
modern  period  was  opened  by  the  growth  of  commerce 
incident  to  the  discoveries  of  the  fifteenth  and  sixteenth 
centuries.  The  chief  recent  change  in  commerce,  which 
has  made  it  a  new  term  in  a  new  era,  has  been  the  in- 
creased rapidity  of  transfer.  The  wheels  of  commerce 
and  the  wheels  of  manufacture  correspond  in  the  start- 
ling speed  of  their  movement.  The  most  significant 
sensuous,  as  well  as  the  most  significant  spiritual,  fact 
in  our  period  is  celerity  of  transfer.  The  physical  and 
intellectual  worlds  are  equally  mobile.  Commodities, 
events,  thoughts,  have  taken  on  an  activity  to  which 
the  past  offers  no  analogy.  The  centre  of  the  revolution 
is  in  the  material  world.  Superior  events  catch  their 
impulse  from  inferior  ones.  Commercial  intercourse  con- 
stitutes the  swift-flowing  central  current  of  the  stream. 
The  telegraph  and  the  telephone  have  reduced  at  once 
by  one-half  the  time  previously  required  for  the  transfer 
of  merchandise.  Three-quarters  of  the  remaining  half 
have  been  removed  by  steamships  and  railways.  Nor  is 
this  the  entire  gain.  The  possibility  of  doing  business 
eight  times  more  rapidly  than  of  old  acts  at  once  on  the 
mind,  and  impels  all  to  push  this  celerity  to  the  utmost. 


206  ECONOMICS. 

The  driver  of  oxen  shares  the  sluggishness  of  his  team  ; 
the  driver  of  fast  horses  is  anxious  each  instant  to  test 
their  speed.  Business  passes  into  the  hands  of  the  most 
rapid  and  prompt.  These  gather  at  the  glowing  centres, 
surround  themselves  with  every  secondary  instrument  of 
despatch,  and  momentarily  stimulate  each  other  by  some 
new  achievement.  The  daily  press,  itself  an  embodi- 
ment of  speed,  fills  the  air  with  the  hum  of  events,  and 
leaves  no  rest  to  eager  minds.  Large  spaces  and  long 
periods  lose  their  relative  force  in  the  presence  of  this 
adventuresome  and  devouring  commerce. 

The  part  which  railways  have  come  to  play  in  inter- 
course is  somewhat  more  obvious  than  the  service  ren- 
dered by  steamships,  but,  taking  the  world  as  a  whole, 
is  secondary  and  less  significant.  Canals,  like  the 
Suez,  Sault  Ste.  Marie,  Welland,  Baltic,  have  greatly 
extended  and  hastened  commerce.  Sailing-vessels  con- 
sumed from  six  to  eight  months  in  reaching  India  by 
the  Cape.  Steamers  now  make  the  voyage  in  a  single 
month.  The  tonnage  passing  the  Sault  in  1S90  ex- 
ceeded by  one-half  million  tons  that  traversing  the  Suez 
Canal.  The  traffic  is  on  the  rapid  increase.  The  num- 
ber of  vessels  that  clear  at  Chicago  each  year  exceeds 
by  seven  thousand  the  number  that  clears  at  New  York.1 
The  tonnage  which  passes  Detroit  is  greater  than  that 
which  enters  Liverpool.  At  the  close  of  1889  the  yearly 
tonnage  of  the  Mississippi  Valley  was  3,393,380  ;  of  the 
Atlantic  seaboard,  2,794,440 ;  of  the  Great  Lakes, 
926,355. 

In  the  past  forty  years  two  changes  have  taken  place 
in  ocean  steamers  which  have  revolutionized  commerce. 

i  W.  P.  Frye,  Forum,  vol.  xi.  291. 


RAPIDITY  OF  COMMERCE.  207 

The  first  of  these  was  the  substitution  of  iron  for  wood 
in  construction.  In  connection  with  this  change,  there 
came  a  remarkable  reduction  of  the  foreign  trade  of  the 
United  States  contrasted  with  that  of  England.  In  1856 
the  United  States  carried  75.2  per  cent  of  all  goods 
received ;  in  1888,  13.48  per  cent.  From  1870  to  1882 
England  built  17  ships  to  our  one  for  foreign  trade.  In 
tonnage  the  ratio  was  21  to  one.1  England  owns  70  per 
cent  of  the  ocean  steam  tonnage  of  the  world.  This 
mastery  was  achieved,  in  large  part,  by  the  substitution 
of  iron  vessels  for  wooden  ones.  A  slight  advantage 
has  become  in  commerce,  as  in  manufacture,  a  com- 
manding superiority.     Every  tendency  is  intense. 

A  second  gain  has  been  made  in  the  economy  of  fuel. 
This  economy  does  not  merely  reduce  the  cost  of 
freights,  it  adds  greatly  to  the  space  in  the  steamship 
which  can  be  devoted  to  them.  Freight  that  not  long 
since  required  200  tons  of  coal  for  carriage  across  the 
Atlantic  can  now  be  transferred  with  35  tons.  Steamers 
of  3,000  tons  burden  can  devote  2,200  tons  to  freight. 
There  has  also  been  a  marked  reduction  in  the  cost 
of  vessels.  A  ship  that  in  1883  cost  $120,000  can  now 
be  built  for  $70,000.2 

The  freight  on  a  bushel  of  wheat  from  New  York  to 
Liverpool  has  been  reduced,  in  a  brief  period,  from  G 
cents  to  2\  cents.  The  ratio  of  expense  of  water- 
freights  to  land-freights  is  about  one  to  five.  The 
changes,  both  by  land  and  by  sea,  are  so  rapid  as  in  given 
cases  to  materially  modify  this  ratio.  Steamships  are 
so  valuable  and  their  cargoes  so  large  that  every  effort  is 

1  David  A.  Wells,  Forum,  vol.  xiv.  607. 

2  "  Subjects  of  Social  Welfare,"  p.  133. 


208  ECONOMICS. 

made  to  hasten  the  unloading  and  loading  of  them. 
Once  in  port  the  work  proceeds  by  day  and  by  night 
with  full  appliances. 

There  has  also  been  a  great  increase  in  the  speed  of 
ocean  steamers.  It  has  now  reached  25  miles  an  hour, 
with  the  expectation  of  still  further  gain.  This  speed  has 
come  with  enlargement  of  dimensions,  with  more  secu- 
rity, and  more  comfort.  Going  down  to  the  sea  has 
lost  most  of  its  danger  and  all  of  its  hardship. 

§  2.  This  acceleration  of  manufacture  and  commerce 
during  the  past  century  has  been  productive  of  obvious 
and  far-reaching  social  changes.  One  of  the  most  con- 
spicuous and  important  of  these,  and  one  still  in  full 
force,  has  been  the  growth  of  cities.  In  1800  there 
were  in  the  United  States  6  cities  with  a  population  of 
8,000  or  over ;  in  1880  there  were  286.  While  the  en- 
tire population  increased  12  per  cent,  the  population  in 
cities  increased  85  per  cent.  In  1800  the  per  cent  in 
cities  was  3.9 ;  in  1880  it  was  22.5.  *  In  the  period 
between  1880  and  1890,  46  cities  in  the  United  States 
passed  the  limit  of  25,000  inhabitants,  three  gaining  in 
the  ten  years  each  more  than  33,000 ;  Seattle  gained 
37,304.  Six  cities  in  the  same  decade  have  passed  the 
limit  of  200,000,  Buffalo  making  a  gain  of  100,530; 
three  cities  the  limit  of  400,000,  Baltimore  with  an  in- 
crease of  102,126.  Two  cities,  Chicago  and  Philadel- 
phia, have  come  to  contain  more  than  a  million,  Chicago 
gaining  596,665. 

In  England  and  Wales,  cities  increased  five-fold  in 
the  same  80  years.  In  1800  Boston,  New  York,  Phila- 
delphia, and   Baltimore  contained  collectively   180,000. 

1  A.  B.  Hart,   Quarterly  Journal  of  Economics,  vol.  iv. 


GROWTH   OF  CITIES.  209 

No  other  city  had  more  than  10,000  white  inhabitants.! 
London  has  a  population  of  nearly  six  millions,  exceed- 
ing that  of  Ireland  or  Sweden  or  Portugal  or  Holland 
or  Belgium  or  Canada. 

This  growth  of  cities  has  been  due  to  the  concentra- 
tion which  accompanies  the  development  of  manufacture 
and  commerce,  and  which  has  called  out  a  strong  gre- 
garious tendency.  Poverty  fails  to  drive  out  even  the 
most  needy  from  the  haunts  of  men.  They  find  a  com- 
pensation for  all  evils  in  the  close  contact  of  cities. 
Not  only  does  improved  manufacture  issue  in  large 
plants,  these  plants  cluster  about  the  same  centre.  The 
facilities  of  production,  of  purchase  and  sale,  are  thus 
greatly  increased.  A  slight  advantage  in  position  goes 
far  to  determine  the  results  of  competition.  A  distillery 
in  Peoria  represents  a  very  considerable  per  cent  of  ad- 
vantage in  the  manufacture  of  spirits. 

Manufacture  and  commerce  play  into  each  other,  and 
tend  on  both  sides  to  build  up  a  ruling  city.  Centres  of 
distribution  adjust  the  channels  of  communication  to 
themselves  over  a  wide  area,  and  render  change  more 
and  more  difficult.  The  influences  may  be  obvious 
or  obscure  which  determine,  in  the  first  instance,  the 
growth  of  a  city  ;  but  that  growth  soon  comes  to  provide 
for  itself.  The  larger  whirlpool  devours  the  smaller 
ones. 

Railways  are  now  a  leading  consideration  in  this 
growth,  and  have  modified  the  force  of  natural  advan- 
tages. A  concentration  of  railways  has  the  building 
power  of  waterways.  Railways  greatly  extend  the  lim- 
its of  a  city.     Communication  within  the  city  and  with 

1 "  History  of  the  United  States,"  Henry  Adams,  vol.  i.  p.  59. 


21 0  ECONOMICS. 

its  immediate  and  remote  suburbs  enable  it  to  draw  the 
active  agents  of  its  daily  traffic  from  a  circle  of  50  or 
100  miles  radius.  The  railways  nourish  the  cities  and 
give  them  the  freshest  gifts  of  the  country  in  more  pro- 
fusion and  variety  than  belong  to  any  one  portion  of  the 
country. 

With  this  growth  of  the  circumference  of  the  city, 
there  comes  corresponding  strength  at  its  centre.  Build- 
ings of  a  dozen  stories  are  erected,  and  their  floors  in- 
terlaced with  elevators  -like  vertical  railroads,  a  single 
building  accommodating  3,000  and  4,000  tenants,  and 
doing  the  business  which  formerly  fell  to  entire  blocks. 

§  3.  The  social  results  which  attend  on  this  concen- 
tration of  population  are  of  a  very  mingled  character. 
The  possibilities  of  good  and  evil  are  both  much  in- 
creased, and  call  for  a  corresponding  strength  in  the 
moral  organic  forces.  Social  impulses  are  greatly  in- 
tensified, are  more  disruptive  between  classes,  and  call 
for  special  influences  to  maintain  unity  and  secure  benef- 
icent action.  Intelligence  is  much  quickened  in  some 
directions  by  constant  contact,  and  by  an  unwearied  de- 
mand for  effort.  The  city  has  an  attractive  power  over 
all  bold  and  active  minds,  as  the  centre  of  motion.  Pas- 
sions and  appetites  are  correspondingly  stimulated ;  and 
events,  moving  in  mass,  impart  something  of  their  own 
momentum  to  personal  sentiments.  An  unharmonized 
social  life,  full  of  violent  .and  discordant  impulses,  pro- 
duces painful  contrasts,  and  is  liable,  on  slight  occasion, 
to  break  forth  in  open  violence. 

The  city,  as  contrasted  with  the  country,  offers  con- 
ditions for  more  extended  and  personal  organization, 
and  demands  it.     As  a  matter  of  fact,  however,  in  large 


SOCIAL   CHANGES.  211 

cities  this  organization  is  readily  arrested  at  class  lines, 
and  the  people  are  less  knit  to  each  other  by  legal,  social, 
and  moral  ties  than  in  the  country.  An  opinion  is  very 
current  that  vices  and  vicious  forms  of  traffic  are  to  be 
treated  with  more  leniency  in  the  city  than  in  the  coun- 
try ;  that  is,  the  urgency  of  the  case  is  allowed  to  beget 
concession,  not  resistance. 

Business  is  carried  on  by  methods  more  unscrupulous, 
less  regardful  on  the  part  of  all  of  the  interests  of  those 
associated  with  them  in  it.  Speculative  methods  pro- 
ceed with  little  rttention  to  the  grievous  losses  that  fall 
on  the  unfortunate.  Those  who  surround  a  gambling- 
table  are  not  more  indifferent  to  the  fate  of  each  other 
than  are  the  members  of  a  stock  exchange.  The  fact  is 
accepted  as  an  inevitable  one,  that  the  gains  of  one  are 
the  losses  of  another.  The  moral  sentiment  is  far  more 
lax  as  to  methods  of  business,  and  seems  in  many  direc- 
tions wholly  repressed.  Minor  virtues,  like  promptness, 
a  superficial  veracity  and  reliability,  take  the  place  of 
the  fundamental  law  of  good-will.  Far  more  liberty  is 
granted  a  man  in  pursuing  simply  his  own  interests  than 
is  conceded  in  the  country,  where  events  move  more 
slowly,  affect  the  entire  community,  and  come  under 
general  observation.  Great  fortunes  are  built  up  in 
ways,  as  in  the  handling  of  railroads,  which  to  the  bu- 
colic mind  seem  robbery,  pure  and  simple.  While  the 
magnitude  of  business  renders  it  scrupulous  in  form,  it 
leaves  it  unsound  m  spirit.  Business  men  play  a  game, 
the  supreme  law  of  which  is  to  come  out  ahead.  The 
economic  organization  of  a  great  city,  which  is  its  most 
conspicuous  and  powerful  organization,  is  thus  one  which 
admits    many  destructive  agents.     There  arc   far  more 


212  ECONOMICS. 

who  are  caught  up  and  shortly  thrown  off  in  the  revolu- 
tion of  business,  like  water  on  a  grindstone,  than  is  at 
all  possible  in  the  staid  ways  of  the  country.  The  suc- 
cesses of  a  few  hide  the  extended  disasters  of  many,  and 
men  rejoice  in  the  motion. 

The  city  is  correspondingly  inorganic  socially.  Local 
contact  and  contrasts  do  not,  as  in  the  country,  bring 
new  relations  and  impose  special  duties.  Narrow  affini- 
ties have  full  sway.  Responsibilities  are  assumed  or 
left  as  each  one  pleases.  Social  ties  form  here  and  there 
in  the  midst  of  other  ties,  and  in  complete  disregard  of 
them.  The  organic  force  is  narrow  and  partial,  does  not 
operate  broadly  through  the  entire  community,  and  leaves 
society  but  feebly  bound  together  as  one  whole. 

With  this  separation  come  refinement  and  luxury,  on 
the  one  hand,  which  do  not  hold  themselves  amenable 
to  poverty,  and,  on  the  other,  extreme  squalor  and 
wretchedness,  which  stand  on  no  terms  with  life  and  its 
comforts  but  those  of  hunger  and  hatred.  A  social 
philosophy  is  slowly  shaped  to  extenuate,  if  not  to  jus- 
tify, these  divisions ;  a  social  philosophy  which  claims 
that  social  classes  owe  little  or  nothing  to  each  other 
beyond  that  cheap  expression  of  liberty,  the  absence  of 
physical  interference.  In  one  tenement  in  New  York 
City  there  are  gathered  568  persons  of  12  nationalities. 
These  people  are  collected  as  fortuitously  by  social 
forces  wholly  beyond  them  as  any  refuse  heap  cast  up 
on  any  shore  or  emptied  out  on  any  dust-field. 

There  have  been  quarters  in  London  where  crime  has 
had  undisputed  sway.  A  limited  region  had  less  or- 
ganization than  a  savage  tribe.  There  are  now  in  Lon- 
don   some    40,000  criminals,  who  are  ready  for   every 


SOCIAL    CHANGES.  213 

chance  of  plunder  and  violence.  Many  cities  have  cer- 
tain sections  in  which  little  attention  is  paid  to  any 
ordinary  range  of  crime. 

The  physical  conditions  in  our  cities  are  often  such  as 
to  render  social  virtue  impossible.  Two  or  more  fami- 
lies are  crowded  into  a  single  room.  A  quarter  of  the 
families  in  Glasgow  are  confined  to  one  apartment.1  All 
ties,  even  the  most  tenacious  ones  of  the  household,  thus 
decay  utterly,  or  are  subjected  to  frightful  abuse.  The 
moral  and  religious  life  of  the  community,  as  one  whole, 
loses  soundness  under  these  conditions.  Under  the 
proverb,  "  Like  people,  like  priest,"  religion  becomes  nar- 
row and  conventional  in  its  methods,  and  hardly  ven- 
tures to  propose  to  itself  its  true  problem.  It  accepts  a 
bad  social  state  as  the  inevitable  product  of  natural  laws, 
and  has  not  the  courage  to  confront  them  with  spiritual 
laws.  "Wealth  is  squandered  on  churches,  and  the  air 
laden  with  the  fragrance  of  Easter  flowers,  when  the 
perfume  floats  away  to  mingle  just  at  hand  with  the 
stenches  of  misery  and  vice. 

As  a  consequence,  large  numbers  of  the  very  poor  and 
still  larger  numbers  of  workmen  are  either  not  brought 
under  religious  influences,  or,  first  breaking  with  their 
fellow-Christians,  have  broken  with  the  faith  they  ad- 
minister.2 

Not  long  since  statistics  were  gathered  in  Pittsburg 
and  Alleghany,  cities  filled  with  a  superior  class  of  work- 
men, as  to  the  religious  affiliations  of  the  people.     There 

1  "  Glasgow  and  its  Municipal  Industries,"  Win.  Smart,  Quarterly 
Journal  <>/  Economics,  vol.  ix.  p.  188. 

2  "  Impotence  of  Churches  in  Manufacturing  Towns,"  Ilev.  W.  B. 
Hale,  Forum,  vol.  xviii.  p.  288. 


214  ECONOMICS. 

were  found  to  be  some  300,000  workmen  in  these  cities. 
There  were  48,000  men  connected  with  the  Protestant 
churches,  two-thirds  of  them  business  men,  one-tenth  of 
them  workmen.  The  Protestant  churches  have  identified 
themselves,  not  intentionally,  but  actually,  with  the  ex- 
isting phase  of  society  and  the  well-to-do  classes.  Shar- 
ing the  social  outlook  of  the  prosperous,  they  have  lost, 
in  a  like  degree,  their  hold  upon  the  working-classes. 
This  is  more  especially  true  in  those  communities  in 
which  workmen  stand  apart  in  their  own  organizations. 
The  many  qualifications  to  which  so  general  a  statement 
may  justly  be  subjected  do  not  materially  alter  its  sig- 
nificance. So  long  as  "  conversion  "  is  regarded  as  a 
comprehensive  expression  of  religious  life,  these  evils, 
which  have  sprung  up  under  the  very  shadow  of  the 
churches,  will  thrive  side  by  side  with  them.  So  deep  is 
this  feeling  of  antagonism  that  some  of  those  engaged  in 
the  most  self-denying  and  effective  forms  of  social  regen- 
eration have  felt  it  necessary  to  avoid  familiar  religious 
methods  as  simply  awakening  needless  prejudice.1 

§  4.  What  are  the  social  results  of  this  accumulation 
of  dissolving  households  and  unaffiliated  men  and  women 
in  our  cities  ?  One  of  the  more  unexpected  results  has 
been  a  constant  increase  of  crime.  Notwithstanding  a 
steady  growth  of  prosperity  and  a  remarkable  diffusion 
of  education,  there  has  been  growing  lawlessness.  The 
extent  of  the  evil  is  not  well  settled,  but  it  certainly 
seems  beyond  denial.  Chicago  has  been  said  to  average 
a  murder  for  every  day  in  the  year.  This  violence,  so 
long  as  it  is  confined  to  certain  localities  and  classes, 

1  "  An  Effort  Toward  Social  Democracy,  A  New  Impulse  to  an 
Old  Gospel,"  Jane  Addams,  Forum,  vol.  xiv.  pp.  226-343, 


MUNICIPAL   GOVERNMENT.  215 

excites  but  little  attention.  Slight  social  pressure  suf- 
fices to  provoke  riot,  and  a  mob  savagely  hostile  to  the 
existing  order  is  let  loose  on  society. 

There  is  in  every  large  city  a  social  residuum  of 
which  it  seems  impossible  for  the  community  to  rid 
itself.  It  is  made  up  of  those  physically  weak,  intellec- 
tually feeble,  the  unfortunate,  and  the  vicious.  These 
together  constitute  an  unannealed  and  irreducible  mass 
of  misery.  In  the  East  End  and  Hocking,  London, 
1|  in  each  hundred  are  vagabonds  and  thieves;  11  very 
poor,  without  regular  employment;  23  poor;  56  com- 
fortable ;  and  9  well-to-do.1  That  is  to  say,  society 
makes  no  show  of  absorbing,  using,  and  rewarding  one- 
eighth  of  its  citizens.  On  the  contrary,  it  is  constantly 
throwing  them  out  of  all  organic  relation  to  itself,  and 
patiently  waiting  for  their  extermination.  This  eighth 
debauches  the  economic,  the  social,  and  the  moral  world, 
and  does  all  that  in  it  lies  to  spread  contagion  in  the 
social  body.  From  the  highest  to  the  lowest  class,  there 
is  a  constant  percolation  downward  to  this  last  stratum 
of  darkness  and  death. 

Another  result,  more  especially  in  American  cities,  is 
a  break-down  in  municipal  government.  Neglect,  ex- 
travagance, corruption,  are  the  rule  in  our  large  cities. 
Kecently  the  Lexow  Committee  were  uncovering  the 
unspeakably  corrupt  rule  associated  with  Tammany  in 
New  York,  a  rule  made  possible  by  the  manner  in 
which  social  vices  are  cherished. 

In  fifteen  of  the  largest  cities  in  the  United  States, 
between  1860-75,  population  increased  10i,  valuation 
157,  debt  271,  taxation  363  per  cent.     A  portion,  yet  a 

1  "  Life  and  Labor  of  the  People,"  Charles  Booth,  vol.  i.  p.  34. 


216  ECONOMICS. 

comparatively  small  portion,  of  this  increase  can  be  satis- 
factorily referred  to  the  unusual  demands  which  attend 
on  rapid  growth.  Between  the  years  1870-80  there  was 
a  reduction  of  debts  in  States  and  towns  and  an  increase 
of  a  hundred  per  cent  in  cities.  Berlin  and  New  York 
are  nearly  of  the  same  size.  Berlin,  with  a  budget  of 
six  millions,  is  well  governed.  New  York,  with  a  budget 
of  thirty  millions,  suffers  every  form  of  bad  govern- 
ment. In  the  November  number  of  the  Forum  for  1892, 
Boston  was  compared  with  Birmingham  in  its  govern- 
ment. The  expenses  of  Boston,  per  cajnta,  were  $16.77  ; 
of  Birmingham,  $4.50.  Yet  the  public  service  is  less 
efficient  in  Boston  than  in  Birmingham.  In  the  August 
Forum  of  the  same  year,  it  is  said,  that  of  the  sev- 
enty-five members  of  the  Common  Council  in  Boston, 
fifty-seven  were  not  taxed  on  property.  Municipal  gov- 
ernment in  the  United  States  is  on  the  brink  of  total 
miscarriage.  Most  corrective  efforts,  so  far,  have  been 
partially  successful  for  brief  periods  only. 

The  life  of  cities  with  us  and  elsewhere  is  fed  from 
the  country.  They  devour  constantly,  as  the  nutriment 
of  their  activity,  the  sound  bodies  and  healthy  minds 
of  the  adjoining  region.  "  Any  city  population  left  to 
itself  would  die  out  in  four  generations."  These  facts, 
taken  collectively,  suffice  to  show  that  the  productive 
and  social  impulses  of  our  time,  while  throwing  our 
population  more  and  more  into  large  cities,  and  there 
subjecting  it  to  terrific  forces  of  trituration,  fail  to  bring 
out  of  the  pabulum  of  humanity  any  pure,  tenacious, 
and  acceptable  social  tissue.  The  issues  upward  in 
higher  forms  of  life  are  strikingly  inadequate,  as  con- 
trasted with  the  waste  downward  in  decay. 


JND1 V1D  UALISM.  217 

§  5.  What  is  the  remedy  of  this  great  evil,  which  our 
civilization  is  developing  as  attendant  on  processes  of 
growth  ?  It  is  not  single,  but  manifold  ;  or  if  it  be 
single,  it  must  assume  the  form  of  more  vital  force, 
itself  manifold  in  its  sources  and  expenditures. 

We  shall  place  first  among  remedies  a  more  general 
sense  of  the  need  of  strictly  organic  forces,  socially  con- 
structive relations,  among  men.  This  better  temper 
should  show  itself  both  in  doing  more,  and  in  doing  it 
with  more  courage,  in  behalf  of  the  common  welfare. 
We  are  suffering  from  extreme  individualism,  which  has 
had  sway  with  us  for  a  century.  The  let-alone  policy  is 
indolent,  indifferent,  helpless  in  the  presence  of  great 
evils.  It  was  this  policy  which  culminated  in  the  Civil 
War.  Individualism,  always  an  important  notion,  be- 
comes, in  the  progress  of  civilization,  more  and  more 
impossible  as  a  single  dominant  idea.  The  centrifugal 
force  has  been  greatly  increased  by  a  diffusion  every- 
where of  an  eager,  money-making  spirit,  a  spirit  that 
brooks  nothing  which  puts  any  restraint  on  its  own 
activity.  This  impulse  is  intensely  individual.  There 
is  occasion,  in  this  fact,  for  a  corresponding  assertion  of 
the  social  welfare,  and  of  those  organic  forces  which 
watch  over  it.  Such  an  assertion,  while  it  lies  some- 
what in  the  direction  of  Socialism,  is  after  all  the  only 
corrective  of  Socialism.  It  is  that  concession  which 
anticipates  and  prevents  revolution.  Organic  forces 
must  institute  new  claims  and  find  new  opportunities. 

More  simplicity  and  vigor  in  government,  punish- 
ments more  helpful  and  more  resistful,  greater  confi- 
dence in  sound  men  and  sound  law,  industrial  training,  a 
watchful  eye  over  public  health  and  public  morals,  pro- 


218  ECONOMICS. 

vision  for  the  instruction  and  amusement  of  the  masses, 
will  all  be  aidful,  if  good-will  and  firm  purpose  enter 
into  them.  These  public  ministrations  to  the  public 
need,  in  no  way,  override  individual  development ;  they 
may,  in  many  ways,  promote  it.  An  unceasing  and  self- 
ish scramble  for  wealth  acts  in  many  unwholesome  ways 
on  personal  power.  It  calls  out  arrogance,  exaction, 
boundless  ambition  here,  and  equally  creates  there 
dependence,  servility,  and  helplessness.  More,  far  more, 
lose  self-reliance  under  discouragement  than  forfeit  it  by 
unreasonable  aid.  There  is  a  midway  point  of  oppor- 
tunity at  which  the  incentives  to  exertion  are  the  great- 
est and  the  most  universal.  It  belongs  to  the  public  to 
do  all  that  it  can  do  to  maintain  these  conditions  of 
prosperity  for  all  citizens  —  to  allow  none  to  be  over- 
whelmed by  circumstances  in  connection  with  which 
they  have  had  little  responsibility,  and  whose  correction 
is  beyond  their  power.  It  is  hardly  possible  for  a 
community  to  provide  too  liberally  or  too  generally  the 
incentives  of  activity,  provided  that  they  are  incentives. 
When  men  contemplate  the  training  of  their  own  chil- 
dren, the  let-alone  theory  suffers  many  wise  modifi- 
cations. 

History  is  not  wanting  in  successful  examples  of 
rapid  improvement  in  large  cities  under  a  vigorous  pol- 
icy. London  in  the  last  century  was  unsafe  through 
its  entire  extent  after  nightfall.  The  "  Mohocks  "  car- 
ried violence  and  debauch  everywhere.  Yet  the  evil, 
though  great  and  general,  was  not  beyond  the  power  of 
good  government,  when  government  had  the  boldness 
to  cope  with  it.1     But  recently  the  Council  of  London 

1  "History  of  England  in  the  Eighteenth  Century,"  vol.  f.  p.  482. 


A   DEPRESSED   CLASS.  219 

bought  up  and  cleared  off  an  area  of  fifteen  acres,  at  an 
expense  of  £300,000,  as  the  only  speedy  and  effective 
means  of  removing  a  plague-spot. 

There  is  an  impression  very  current  that  certain  vices 
are  to  be  tolerated  in  cities ;  that  it  is  impossible  to 
restrain  them,  and  so  unwise  to  make  the  attempt.  Ex- 
terior decency  is  all  that  is  to  be  aimed  at.  Thus 
intemperance,  gambling,  and  prostitution  find  positive 
entertainment,  or  convenient  shelter,  in  many  cities. 
This  method  can  issue  in  nothing  but  an  ever-renewed 
and  hopelessly  depressed  class,  a  class  that  hates  the 
social  life  which  has  used  and  abused  it,  and  finally 
cast  it  out  for  ends  of  ease  and  indolence.  Those  whom 
society  has  destroyed  will,  opportunity  favoring,  destroy 
society.  It  matters  little  that  this  justifying  argument 
is  but  half  true ;  it  will  act,  by  virtue  of  its  truth,  on 
the  perverse  minds  subject  to  it,  as  if  it  were  com- 
pletely true.  There  must  be  more  organic  force,  more 
moral  power,  asserting  themselves  in  a  direct  and  effec- 
tive form.  Methods  will  not  prosper  without  convic- 
tions, and  convictions  will  not  fructify  without  methods. 
We  must  have  the  courage  to  make  many  false  starts, 
and  the  greater  courage  to  correct  them. 

Much  is  made  of  the  fact  that  unenforced  laws  are 
pernicious.  The  remedy  is  more  frequently  in  enfor- 
cing, not  in  repealing,  the  law.  Crimes  with  no  laws 
against  them  are  still  worse  than  laws  not  carried  out. 
The  law  stands  for  incipient  effort,  the  absence  of  law 
for  no  effort. 


220  ECONOMICS. 


CHAPTER  VL 
DISTRIBUTION. 

§  1.  Distribution  —  the  division  of  products  between 
those  who  take  part  in  production  —  is  the  department 
of  Economics  which  more  than  any  other  draws  forth 
uneasy  and  critical  discussion.  The  fundamental  char- 
acteristic of  distribution  should  be  justice.  It  raises 
many  questions  between  class  and  class,  man  and  man  ; 
and  these  questions  can  be  set  at  rest  only  by  plain 
principles  of  justice.  Whatever  degree  of  good-will 
may  accompany  distribution,  the  way  must  be  prepared 
for  it  by  justice. 

Rigid  economists  are  read}-  to  claim  that  this  division 
is  settled  by  natural  laws,  and  that  any  interference 
with  these  laws  works  mischief,  embarrasses  their  ac- 
tion, and  hides  from  us  the  true  remedy.  If  this  were 
strictly  true,  then  justice  would  play  no  part  in  distri- 
bution, any  more  than  in  action  under  the  law  of  gravi- 
tation. If,  on  the  other  hand,  there  were  no  truth  in 
this  assertion  of  economists,  if  division  were  a  purely 
voluntary  matter,  society  could  not  proceed  in  that  silent, 
instinctive  way  that  now  characterizes  it.  Men  would 
not  find  the  methods  of  distribution  spontaneously  de- 
veloped, but  would  be  compelled  to  secure  them  by 
anticipatory  devices.  The  truth  seems  to  be  that,  here 
as  elsewhere,  there  are  spontaneous  tendencies  which 
carry  men  forward  in  production  and  distribution,  yet 


JUSTICE  IN   DISTRIBUTION.  221 

tendencies  which  are  modified,  and  ought  to  be  modi- 
fied, by  wise  counsel.  The  voluntary  comes  in  to  com- 
plete the  involuntary  and  give  it  the  sanction  of  reason. 
We  cannot  neglect  the  natural  laws  of  distribution  as 
laid  down  by  economists.  We  cannot  submit  ourselves 
blindly  to  them  as  themselves  sufficient  to  secure  pros- 
perity. Natural  laws  are  a  term  in  the  problem,  but 
still  a  term  that  leaves  it  open  to  the  solution  of  wis- 
dom and  good-will.  No  law  in  Economics  claims  im- 
plicit obedience  as  itself  taking  completely  in  hand  the 
public  welfare.  The  public  welfare  remains  an  inde- 
pendent criterion  by  which  we  are  to  judge  the  opera- 
tion of  the  law  and  guide  ourselves  in  its  use. 

The  idea  of  justice  is  the  additional  social  idea  which 
we  bring  to  economic  principles  in  assigning  them  limits 
and  defining  our  own  action  under  them.  We  handle  a 
steam-engine  under  natural  law,  and  yet  the  method  of 
our  handling  is  settled  by  the  service  we  wish  it  to 
render. 

Justice  means  equality  of  method  and  of  opportunity 
between  man  and  man,  as  controlled  by  the  public 
welfare.  It  excludes  the  personal  element,  but  accepts 
freely  those  circumstances  which  define  the  relations 
of  events  and  persons  to  the  public  weal.  Under  jus- 
tice all  submit  to  the  public  welfare ;  and  the  public 
welfare,  itself  defined  by  the  facts  of  the  case,  controls 
all  indifferently.  Parts,  powers,  persons,  are  rewarded 
in  the  way  which  is  conducive  to  the  largest  produc- 
tion, to  the  most  general  and  comprehensive  prosperity. 
Nothing  is  absolute,  nothing  personal.  All  is  relative 
to  that  welfare  which  is  the  first  concernment  of  all. 
If  any  right,  as  the  right  of  property,  is  accepted  as 


2'22  ECONOMICS. 

inviolable,  it  is  so  accepted  as  an  indispensable  condi- 
tion of  the  public  weal.  The  essential  idea  in  justice 
is  equality  between  persons  before  the  law,  inequali- 
ties being  accepted  solely  in  connection  with  the  gen- 
eral welfare.  Justice  involves  a  constant  struggle  of  an 
equalizing  social  sentiment  with  the  inequalities  of  cir- 
cumstances, the  two  harmonized  in  social  construction. 
There  can  be  no  fixed  form  or  principle  either  in  equal- 
ities or  inequalities.  They  are  in  constant  interplay, 
and  new  phases  of  equilibrium  arise  from  new  condi- 
tions. This  fact  does  not  alter  the  definite  and  cardinal 
character  of  the  notion  of  justice. 

Economic  laws  enter  into  the  social  problem  to  give 
us  the  lay  of  the  land,  the  primary  terms  with  which 
we  have  to  deal.  Civic  forces  take  part,  if  they  take 
part  wisely,  in  the  solution  of  this  problem  by  an  effort 
steadily  to  hold  in  check  the  crowding  tendencies  of 
classes  and  persons,  and  to  keep  fresh  and  real  for  all 
the  opportunities  of  life.  Ethical  laws  are  present  as 
the  final  criteria  of  conduct,  the  circumstances  under 
which  it  arises  being  defined  by  existing  economic  and 
civic  conditions. 

§  2.  There  are  four  classes  among  which  the  returns 
of  production  are  apportioned,  —  the  holders  of  land,  the 
holders  of  capital,  those  who  direct  labor,  those  who  per- 
form labor.  The  interests  of  these  classes  are  essen- 
tially distinct,  though  they  may  be  united  in  every 
variety  of  way  in  the  same  person.  The  return  which 
the  landlord  receives  is  termed  rent.  This  payment  is 
vigorously  attacked  as  radically  wrong.  It  is  also  fre- 
quently apportioned  under  social  conditions  which  so 
hamper  and  warp  the  economic  forces  as  to  leave  them 


RENT  AND  INTEREST.  223 

but  feebly  operative.  While  rent,  therefore,  is  that  one 
of  the  four  portions  in  distribution  which  is  most  defi- 
nitely defined  by  economic  theory,  in  practice  it  is  much 
affected  by  unfavorable  social  relations,  and  serves  in 
turn  to  aggravate  the  evils  that  arise  between  classes. 
This  portion  of  distribution  has  been  already  discussed, 
and  gave  occasion  to  the  conclusions  that  the  state  may 
well  limit  the  amount  of  land  to  be  held  by  any  one  per- 
son, that  civil  law  should  favor  the  ready  transfer  of  real 
estate,  that  it  should  restrict  the  right  of  bequest,  and 
should  discourage  the  separation  of  ownership  and  use 
in  land.  Land,  cultivated  by  the  persons  who  own  it, 
does  not  raise  the  question  of  the  proper  amount  of  rent. 
Economic  forces  settle  this  point  in  a  silent  way. 

It  will  be  observed  that  all  these  restrictions  enter 
simply  in  limitation  of  concessions  that  have  been  made 
by  civil  law,  and  all  tend  to  restore  the  conditions  under 
which  economic  forces  have  freest  play.  They  shut  out 
civic  law  and  let  in  natural  law.  It  does  not  seem  wise 
to  go  further  than  this,  chiefly  because  exclusive  owner- 
ship by  the  individual  is  an  essential  condition  of  enter- 
prise, and  also  a  first  term  in  the  full  introduction  of 
economic  forces. 

§  3.  The  part  which  falls  to  capital,  to  wit,  interest, 
is  of  all  portions  the  most  satisfactorily  settled  by  sup- 
ply and  demand.  Exorbitant  rates  arise  chiefly  from 
ignorance,  from  the  timidity  of  capital,  and  from  risks 
which  can  best  be  eliminated,  and  only  be  eliminated, 
by  that  firm  application  of  economic  law  which  tends  to 
make  every  transaction  calculable  and  secure.  High  in- 
terest is  a  penalty  on  bad  method.  Chief  disturbing 
elements  in  the  transfer  of  capital  are  distance  in  place 


224  ECONOMICS. 

and  distance  in  time.  Honest  methods  reduce  both. 
Kemote  sections  can  command  capital  under  the  con- 
dition of  making  the  loan  of  it  safe.  Length  of  time 
more  frequently  favors  than  retards  a  loan,  if  the  se- 
curity is  complete.  The  favorable  terms  which  rule 
the  apportionment  to  capital  of  its  returns  is  seen  in  the 
fact  that  the  rate  of  interest  steadily  decreases  with 
prosperity,  while  the  services  rendered  by  capital  as 
steadily  increase.  This  fact  shows  two  things  which 
bear  on  the  public  welfare,  that  the  incentives  to  accu- 
mulate capital,  though  nominally  decreasing,  are  still 
sufficient  to  do  their  work  ;  and  that  the  community  at 
large  enters  ever  more  freely  into  this  multiplication  of 
resources.  No  distribution  could  well  be  more  benefi- 
cent than  this. 

§  4.  The  division  of  returns  which  is  intrinsically 
most  difficult,  and  which  is  gaining  increasing  attention, 
is  that  between  management  and  labor.  An  undivided 
remainder  falls  to  these  two,  and  is  only  too  frequently 
quarrelled  over.  This  division  goes  much  further  than 
any  other  division  to  determine  the  welfare  of  the 
masses  of  men  —  the  state  of  society.  Management 
often  secures  an  unreasonable  reward ;  and  labor  is,  to 
that  degree,  scrimped  in  its  returns  and  straitened  in 
its  incentives.  This  appearance  of  inequality,  and  the 
restlessness  to  which  it  gives  rise,  are  the  most  striking 
social  facts  of  our  time. 

This  division  at  present  takes  place  —  far  more  than 
in  the  past  —  under  the  form  of  wages.  The  laborers, 
for  the  most  part,  receive  a  specified  sum  for  their 
services  ;  and  the  residuum,  less  or  more,  falls  to  the 
manager.     Economics  justifies   this  division  as  one  so 


MANAGEMENT  AND  LABOR.  225 

involved  in  the  nature  of  tilings  that  it  cannot  be  mate- 
rially altered  ;  as  one  at  once  rising  to  the  surface  under 
the  spontaneous  action  of  productive  forces.  It  is  af- 
firmed that  efforts  to  alter  this  form  of  distribution  will, 
in  the  end,  either  leave  less  to  be  distributed,  or  will 
favor  one  class  of  workmen  at  the  expense  of  another. 
This  conclusion  is  reached  by  ascribing  to  economic 
forces  an  independence,  a  precision,  which  do  not  belong 
to  them.  They  are  operative  in  conjunction  with  many 
other  social  forces  which  come  in  to  modify  them.  We 
are  not  dealing  with  a  dividend,  a  divisor,  a  quotient  of 
fixed  values.  These  terms  will  every  one  of  them  relax 
or  expand  somewhat  under  purely  social  reasons.  A  sat- 
isfied and  trustful  temper,  sober  and  prudent  expendi- 
ture, a  prosperity  that  is  slowly  creeping  outward  into 
the  resources  of  all,  and  returning  inward  as  an  increas- 
ing demand  for  products,  will  very  much  alter  the  results 
under  economic  conditions  that  seem  closely  to  resemble 
each  other.  The  community  may  be  moving  by  virtue 
of  social  forces  through  a  given  economic  position  up- 
ward, or  it  may  be  moving  downward  through  a  position 
closely  allied  to  it  in  its  material  terms. 

Here,  again,  the  measures  which  have  been  most  effi- 
cacious in  increasing  the  portion  of  labor  have  lain  in 
restoring  power  to  economic  forces.  Men  have  refused 
to  be  satisfied  with  apparent,  but  delusive,  competition, 
and  have  striven  to  secure  an  independent  footing  from 
which  a  real  contest,  a  fair  contest,  could  be  carried  on. 
The  wabbling  wheel  is  made  once  more*  firm  on  its  axle, 
and  so  the  laws  of  mechanics  secure  again  a  fortunate 
action.  There  is  a  real,  not  a  fictitious,  measurement  of 
claims  and  powers  instituted  between  labor  and  manage- 


226  ECONOMICS. 

merit,  and  this  better  measurement  is  made  the  basis  of 
division.  A  true  application  of  economic  law  brings  to 
the  surface  all  the  forces  involved  in  any  given  pro- 
ductive problem,  and  compares  them  one  with  another. 
It  does  not  allow  the  solution  to  go  by  default,  on  the 
ground  of  some  unfortunate  social  customs  or  accepted 
principles  for  the  moment  operative.  The  labor-move- 
ment has  not  as  a  whole  worked  against,  but  has  worked 
with,  economic  laws,  assigning  them  conditions  more 
favorable  for  the  full  recognition  of  all  the  productive 
energies  contemplated  by  them.  Bad  social  terms  exist 
in  suspension  of  economic  forces,  and  easily  divert  them 
from  their  true  lines  of  action.  Sound  reform  is  often 
nothing  more  than  a  restoration  of  natural  laws  by  mak- 
ing more  favorable  the  conditions  of  action  which  had 
become  partial  and  superficial. 

§  5.  Before  we  enter  on  a  discussion  of  distribution 
as  it  takes  effect  between  labor  and  management,  it  is 
well  to  see  how  much  margin  lies  between  the  two,  how 
far  labor  can,  by  any  possibility,  improve  its  condition 
by  means  of  a  corrected  division  of  products.  Is  there 
any  considerable  advantage  under  contention  ? 

The  wealth  in  the  United  States  was  in  1889,  £160 
per  capita;  in  France,  £190;  and  in  England,  £270.1 
Certainly,  so  far  as  the  general  accumulation  of  the  re- 
sults of  labor  is  concerned,  it  is  possible  for  the  work- 
man, in  common  with  others,  to  gain  much  more  than 
now  falls  to  him.  This  is  the  chief  possibility  of  so- 
ciety, and  his  chief  possibility.  But  the  aggregate  of 
wealth  is   not  now   so   small  as  to  make  it  impossible 

>  Mr.  Giffen,  Spectator,  Dec.  21 ,  1889.  The  per  capita  valuation  of 
tue  United  States  iu  1890  was  $1,039. 


TERMS   OF  DISTINCTION.  227 

that  he  should  materially  profit  by  a  more  favorable 
distribution. 

A  point  of  much  interest  in  the  discussion,  and  one  in 
reference  to  which  our  knowledge  is  incomplete,  is  a 
definite  expression  of  the  annual  productive  power  of 
any  given  community,  and  the  percentage  of  these 
joint  products  which  falls  to  labor.  Edward  Atkin- 
son reaches  the  conclusion  that  ninety-five  per  cent  of 
all  products  in  the  United  States  are  consumed  by  work- 
men, that  an  equal  division  of  the  common  gains  would 
yield  the  individual  fifty  cents  a  day,  and  that  if  all  in- 
comes above  a  thousand  dollars  were  equally  divided 
among  those  less  prosperous,  the  increase  would  be  ex- 
pressed by  five  cents  a  day  —  the  price  of  a  glass  of 
beer.  If  these  estimates  are  correct,  or  even  proximately 
correct,  the  motives  for  strife  between  management  and 
labor  would  almost  wholly  disappear.  The  contention 
would  not  be  worth  the  candle. 

This  result  was  reached  by  Mr.  Atkinson  by  an 
omission  of  services  in  his  estimate  of  consumption. 
The  consumption  of  services  is  almost  wholly  confined 
to  the  well-to-do.  According  to  the  estimate  of  Mr. 
Goschen,  services  exceed  commodities  in  value.1  If, 
then,  services  fall  in  consumption  chiefly  to  the  wealthy, 
they  represent  and  make  real  the  apparent  advantage 
of  management  over  labor.  This  advantage  is  neither 
slight  in  itself,  nor  incapable,  by  a  better  division,  of 
altering  somewhat  materially  the  relation  of  classes  to 
each  other.  F.  B.  Hawley,  criticising  the  estimates  of 
Mr.  Atkinson,  reaches  the  conclusion  that  the  aggregate 
consumption  of  labor  is  not  far  from  sixty  per  cent.'2 

1  Spectator,  April  If!,  1892.  2  Forum,  vol.  vii.  p.  L'!K). 


228  ECONOMICS. 

This  conclusion,  if  we  choose  to  assign  ten  per  cent  to 
management  as  a  necessary  concession,  leaves  thirty  per 
cent  to  be  contended  for  in  distribution.  Gronlund,  in 
his  "  Co-operative  Commonwealth,"  refers  fifty  per  cent 
in  consumption  to  rent,  interest,  and  profit. 

If  not  much  more  than  half  of  the  joint  product  now 
falls  to  labor,  the  share  of  labor  could  be  very  sensibly 
increased  by  a  division  which  may  also  be  more  just. 
But  these  gains,  material  as  they  might  be  in  pacifying 
wage-earners,  and  in  helping  them  over  that  line  which 
divides  comfort  from  discomfort, —  supply  of  one's  abso- 
lute necessities  from  a  partial  gratification  of  one's  de- 
sires —  would  by  no  means  express  the  chief  advantage 
of  equitable  distribution.  Any  change  in  distribution 
would  still  leave  much  to  be  desired  in  the  improve- 
ment of  the  condition  of  the  average  workman.  Hopes 
would  have  been  awakened  rather  than  satisfied  by  it. 

The  chief  gain  would  not  so  much  lie  in  an  immediate 
addition  to  the  portion  of  labor,  as  in  a  better  balance 
between  the  processes  and  incentives  of  production.  In- 
creased economy  and  increased  expenditure  would  both 
become  possible  with  the  workman.  The  same  motives 
which  have  resulted  in  the  accumulated  wealth  of  man- 
agers would  begin  to  be  operative  over  the  much  wider 
field  of  the  laboring  classes.  An  enlarged  consumption 
on  their  part  would  stimulate  production.  Their  con- 
tributions to  capital,  and  an  increase  of  capital  due  to 
the  general  prosperity,  would  nourish  productive  power. 
There  would  thus  be  a  tendency  to  establish  what  has 
been  found  to  be  the  most  difficult  of  all  adjust- 
ments, the  ministration  of  one  industrial  movement  to 
another,  the  sustentation  of  one  class  by  another.     Pro- 


TERMS   OF  DISTINCTION.  229 

duction  lias  constantly  tended  to  excess  of  motive  here 
and  deficiency  of  motive  there.  The  gain  at  one  point 
has  thus  turned,  after  a  little,  into  loss  at  other  points. 
Supply  and  demand,  on  whose  favorable  relation  all 
progress  ultimately  turns,  have  constantly  fallen  into 
awkward  and  disappointing  relations.  Supply  has  out- 
stripped demand,  and  so  production  itself  has  issued 
in  loss.  The  wider  the  field  of  consumption,  and  the 
more  diversified  the  products,  the  less  frequently  would 
these  maladjustments  arise.  Power  would  correspond 
to  power,  demand  would  confront  demand,  and  produc- 
tion would  no  longer  fail  at  one  point  simply  because 
there  was  no  corresponding  production  elsewhere. 
Wide  consumption  means  wide  production.  "We  should 
rescue  ourselves  from  that  irrational  dilemma  in  which 
hunger  cannot  secure  food,  and  food  sinks  in  price 
below  profit  in  the  presence  of  hunger ;  in  which  the 
ill-clothed  cannot  clothe  themselves,  and  clothes  can- 
not be  gotten  rid  of  in  the  depressed  market ;  in  which 
a  thousand  things  need  to  be  done,  and  a  thousand  are 
ready  to  do  them,  but  the  two  cannot  be  gotten  together 
on  profitable  terms  of  exchange. 

This  miscarriage  is  due  chiefly  to  the  fact  that  part 
does  not  respond  to  part  by  a  wise  distribution  of  pros- 
perity in  the  field  of  production.  W'ants  are  not  demand, 
and  possessions  are  not  supply,  in  the  world's  market, 
-lust  distribution,  in  the  very  degree  in  which  it  is  liberal 
distribution,  corrects  this  evil.  Each  player  is  ready 
for  the  game,  for  he  has  his  own  cards  in  hand.  The 
machine  runs  smoothly,  because  each  wheel  revolves 
firmly  around  its  own  centre.  In  this  better  distribu- 
tion of  incentives,  any  slight  reduction  which  may  fall 


230  ECONOMICS. 

to  the  manager  is  a  gain  rather  than  a  loss.  He  suffers 
from  over-excitement,  over-intensity,  and  the  presence 
of  too  many  wasteful,  speculative  opportunities.  A 
slower  movement  would  be  in  every  way  a  safer  and 
better  one. 

§  6.  The  one  consideration  which  we  recognize  as 
defining  justice,  and  constituting  the  final  test  of  excel- 
lence in  distribution,  is  the  public  welfare.  Whatever 
inequalities  it  accepts,  we  accept;  whatever  it  rejects,  we 
reject.  All  motives  ultimately  unite  in  the  public  wel- 
fare. It,  in  the  end,  is  comprehensive  of  individual 
welfare.  Indeed,  the  two  are  only  different  statements 
of  the  same  thing.  Moreover,  all  economic  law  derives 
its  force  from  being  the  law  of  communal,  not  of  per- 
sonal, production. 

A  forced  equality  in  distribution  —  and  absolute 
equality  can  only  be  reached  by  force  —  is  one  extreme  ; 
unregulated  inequality,  inequality  left  to  the  caprice  of 
personal  powers,  is  the  other  extreme.  The  two  ex- 
tremes beget  each  other.  The  intolerable  evils  on  this 
side  drive  us  over  to  those  on  the  other  side.  Prosper- 
ous society  is  a  movable  equilibrium,  secured  by  feeling 
both  tendencies,  and  obeying  neither. 

Equal  distribution  is  at  once  impossible  and  undesira- 
ble. It  is  impossible,  as  no  force  could  secure  it,  or,  if 
it  were  present,  could  retain  it.  It  is  undesirable,  as 
subverting  at  once  both  the  economic  and  the  moral 
world  by  disuniting  actions  and  motives,  effects  and 
causes,  by  disturbing  the  correlations  which  are  build- 
ing the  Kingdom  of  Heaven,  alike  on  the  side  of  strength 
and  of  beauty.  That  distribution  best  promotes  the 
public    welfare    which    maintains   unbroken    over   the 


INDIVIDUAL   LIBERTY.  231 

widest  surface  productive  forces,  and  keeps  these 
forces,  without  loss  on  either  hand,  in  active  interplay. 
The  present  1:  ethod,  with  its  great  inequalities,  does 
not  do  this.  It  cherishes  here  and  there  exorbitant 
power,  but  allows  it  to  issue  at  once  in  the  repression  of 
incentives  among  workmen.  Even  this  power  tends  to 
pass  away,  and  to  be  replaced  by  the  indolence  of  those 
who  have  been  nourished  in  wealth.  Productive  strength 
is  concentrated  at  a  few  points  with  a  corresponding 
impoverishment  at  many  points.  The  heat  is  not  the 
moderate  and  evenly  diffused  heat  of  a  healthy  body, 
but  the  feverish  heat  of  a  disturbed  organization. 

The  unfailing  plea  foi  this  unrestrained  method  is 
individual  liberty.  But  the  type  of  liberty  which  results 
from  it  is  indistinguishable  from  tyranny.  Tyrants  are 
always  free.  Freedom  is  a  question  of  numbers.  That 
society  is  free  which  gives  the  conditions  of  the  most  uni- 
versal freedom  —  freedom  not  as  an  abstract  principle, 
but  as  an  actual  possession.     Freedom  is  diffused  power. 

Equality,  on  the  other  hand,  which  is  the  result  of  co- 
ercion, is  instantly  destructive  of  power,  and  of  the  lib- 
erty which  lies  in  the  use  of  power.  The  diligent  are 
compelled  to  labor  for  the  indolent,  and  the  indolent 
indulge  their  indolence  with  impunity.  Constraint  is 
shifted  from  those  who  have  the  least  power,  and  are 
least  disposed  to  use  it,  to  those  who  have  the  most 
power.  There  is  a  new  bondage,  the  bondage  of 
strength  to  weakness,  virtue  to  vice. 

There  is  certainly  some  attainable  mean  between  these 
two  extremes.  We  may  increase,  on  this  side,  opportu- 
nity, and  so  the  incentives  to  effort,  and  reduce,  on  that 
side,  an  excessive  reward,  thereby  calling  for  more  con- 


232  ECONOMICS. 

tinuous  industry.  The  existing  method  of  distribution 
in  leaving  organic  forces  to  themselves,  the  socialistic 
method,  in  neglecting  primitive,  constructive  energies 
and  taking  society  wholly  into  its  own  hand,  sin  equally 
and  in  opposite  directions.  Prosperity  is  the  product, 
under  all  forms  of  experience,  of  primitive  powers  shaped 
toward  the  goal  of  perfection  by  clearly  perceived  prin- 
ciples, patiently  applied.  Both  the  social  facts  now  of- 
fered by  distribution,  and  the  ruling  ideas  involved  in 
it,  call  for  an  inquiry  into  it,  looking  toward  correction 
and  improvement. 

§  7.  The  division  of  products  between  the  manager 
and  the  workman  is  now  accomplished  chiefly  by  the 
system  of  wages.  This  system  has  been  the  natural 
outcome  of  industrial  forces,  pursuing,  in  the  most 
direct  way,  the  path  open  to  them.  It  has  in  itself 
some  important  advantages. 

It  is  the  most  simple  and  purely  commercial  method. 
It  leaves  management  most  untrammelled.  Enterprise 
pursues  its  own  ends,  in  its  own  ways,  and  is  asked  no 
questions.  It  has  also  the  important  advantage  that 
the  manager,  for  the  moment,  assumes  all  the  risks. 
The  workman  can  rely  on  a  regular  payment  of  wages. 
The  risk  and  the  responsibility  rest  together  with  the 
manager.  This  apparent  freedom  of  the  workman  is  a 
somewhat  delusive  advantage.  If  any  violent  convul- 
sion or  severe  loss  comes  to  the  business  with  which  he 
is  associated,  he  may  be  thrown  out  of  employment. 
That  which  more  than  anything  else  sustains  the  wages- 
system  is  the  direct,  unimpeded  movement  it  gives  to 
management. 

Its  disadvantages  are  both  economic  and  social.     The 


EVILS    OF    WAGE-SYSTEM.  283 

workman  ceases  more  and  more,  under  this  system,  to 
be  an  intelligent,  interested,  and  responsible  partaker  in 
production.  This  attitude  favors  in  him  indolence,  in- 
difference, and  improvidence.  It  very  much  limits  that 
training  in  forecast  and  patience  which  well-ordered  in- 
dustry is  fitted  to  give.  In  the  lower  ranks  of  labor, 
this  indolence  and  indifference  prevail  to  a  degree  which 
frequently  compels  the  employer  to  work  his  men  in 
gangs  with  an  overseer.  Thus  the  wages  of  one  man, 
whose  duty  it  is  to  keep  at  work  a  group  of  five,  ten, 
twenty,  are  deducted  from  their  wages. 

The  higher  class  of  workmen  are  also  deficient  in  that 
forecast  and  that  willingness  to  bear  present  inconve- 
nience for  a  future  profit,  which  constitute  the  essential 
conditions  of  prosperity.  All  forms  of  insurance  have 
been  distasteful  to  them,  nor  have  they  inclined  to  that 
economy  in  present  expenditure  which  is  essential  to  a 
mastery  of  the  industrial  situation.  The  wages-system 
is  not  favorable  to  the  best  development  of  workmen. 
Only  exceptional  ones,  who  are  forcing  their  way  out  of 
it,  thrive  under  it. 

It  also  brings  into  the  foreground  the  opposition  of 
interests  between  the  employer  and  the  employee.  The 
two  stand  with  each  other  on  conflicting  terms.  In  one 
aspect  their  interests  are  concurrent;  in  another,  they 
are  opposed.  As  producers,  it  is  for  their  common  ad- 
vantage that  the  production  should  be  as  great  as  pos- 
sible. As  parties  who  must  ultimately  divide  these 
returns  between  them,  they  are  in  conflict.  One  may 
furnish  a  net;  a  half-dozen  men  may  assist  in  its  use. 
All  wish  the  largest  catch ;  but  when  they  sit  down  to 
divide,  all  also  wish  the  largest  possible   share.     The 


234  EC0X0M1CS. 

wages-system,  by  directing  the  attention  at  once  and  ex- 
clusively to  wages,  keeps  the  partition  of  products  in 
the  foreground,  diverts  the  attention  from  the  common 
interest,  and  makes  the  success  of  the  undertaking 
comparatively  immaterial  to  the  workman.  It  is  only 
in  a  more  remote  and  obscure  way,  by  permanence  of 
occupation,  by  a  possible  advance  of  wages,  that  the 
workman  is  interested  in  the  success  of  production. 
His  habitual  lack  of  forecast  reduces  this  motive  to  it's 
lowest  terms.  His  present  wages  are  fixed,  his  imme- 
diate position  assured.  Any  dissatisfaction  in  these 
present  terms  overshadows  remote  possibilities.  The 
occasions  for  wrangling  and  dissent  between  manage- 
ment and  labor  lie  directly  open  to  both.  If  faithful 
service  results  in  a  prosperity  that  warrants  an  increase 
of  wages,  that  increase  must  still  be  secured  by  a  fresh 
conflict. 

The  social  evils  are  akin  to  the  commercial  ones. 
The  wages-system  greatly  deepens  the  division  between 
classes.  Other  conditions,  other  thoughts,  other  possi- 
bilities, engage  the  workman  and  the  manager.  On  this 
side,  there  are  little  stimulus  and  light  hope  •  on  that 
side,  intense  incentives  and  sanguine  expectations.  The 
lives  of  the  two  classes  fall  apart,  first  economically, 
then  socially,  and  at  length  in  civic  force.  Workmen 
are  grouped  as  hands,  an  essential  but  troublesome  fac- 
tor in  production,  to  be  displaced  and  replaced  as  far  as 
possible  by  the  more  obedient  agent,  machinery. 

This  feeling,  which  arises  so  inevitably  and  uncon- 
sciously, tends  to  make  the  employer  thoughtless  and 
cruel.  He  is  often  pressed  by  heavy  risks,  and  must 
look    to  his  own   interests.     Is  not  the  workman   pro- 


EVILS   OF   WAGE-SYSTEM.  235 

vided  for  in  his  wages  ?  Is  not  his  relationship  suffi- 
ciently defined  by  them  and  fully  met  in  their  prompt 
payment?  Is  not  he  the  manager  dealing  with  his 
own  in  himself  shaping  his  business?  Must  not  the 
employee  as  well  as  the  employer  accept  the  chances  of 
business  ?  His  sympathies  are  thus  restricted,  and  his 
vision  narrowed,  till  management  often  becomes  a  reck- 
less and  heartless  gambling,  the  stakes  being  the  happi- 
ness of  many  households,  whose  welfare  has  no  shadow 
of  representation  or  of  defence. 

The  social  barriers  which  are  thus  slowly  built  up 
between  the  two  parties  to  production  —  parties  that 
ought  rather  to  be  drawn  into  an  ever  more  vital  affilia- 
tion —  become  high  and  strong  beyond  the  power  of 
most  to  clamber  over  them  or  make  a  breach  in  them. 
This  divisive  tendency  is  clearly  seen  in  a  simple  and 
common  incident.  Pittsfield,  a  small  New  England  city, 
had  occasion  to  lay  somewhat  extended  sewage  drains. 
The  contractor  brought  in  Italians  at  low  wages  to  do 
the  work.  The  laboring  men  in  the  city  might  work 
with  them  at  these  reduced  rates,  or  have  no  part  in 
the  enterprise.  Thus,  what  should  have  been  a  source 
of  profit  and  satisfaction  to  an  entire  community,  closely 
united  in  common  interests,  became  an  occasion  of  alien- 
ation. The  poor  were  virtually  excluded  from  their 
own,  at  best  humble,  part  in  the  communal  life. 

§  8.  Notwithstanding  these  evils  of  the  wages-system, 
its  convenience,  simplicity,  and  liberty  make  it  almost 
universal.  Improvement  has  been  sought  by  correction 
within  the  system  itself;  by  a  substitution  of  other  sys- 
tems; and  by  supplementary  methods.  All  have  wrought 
good  results,  but  by  far  the  most  important  gains  have 


236  ECONOMICS. 

been  made  within  the  system  itself.  The  labor-move- 
ment, in  spite  of  its  many  evils,  remains  the  most  com- 
prehensive and  significant  social  ferment  of  our  time.  It 
stands  for  the  combination  of  workmen  —  trades-unions 
-^-for  the  purpose  of  watching  over  and  advancing  their 
own  interests.  The  earliest,  most  obvious,  of  these  in- 
terests was  the  desire  to  secure  a  legal  footing  and  to 
advance  wages.  These  primary  purposes  being  partially 
gained,  and  becoming  less  urgent,  have  given  place  to 
a  large  number  of  secondary  purposes,  as  to  whose 
value  there  can  be  no  dispute.  Among  the  permanent 
objects  of  these  organizations  are  aid  for  the  unem- 
ployed, assistance  in  securing  labor,  providing  tools, 
relief  for  the  sick  and  superannuated,  help  in  any  sud- 
den emergency. 

This  movement  has  found  its  most  extended,  con- 
tinuous, and  fortunate  development  in  England.  The 
opening  of  the  present  century  found  workmen  in  Eng- 
land in  a  very  depressed  and  socially  abject  condition. 
The  burdens  of  the  protracted  war  with  France  fell 
heavily  on  them.  They  were  the  mudsills  on  which 
the  prosperity  of  other  classes  rested  as  a  crushing 
load.  The  evils  of  the  new  forms  of  manufacture  were 
at  their  height,  and  fell  to  the  workmen  as  a  portion  of 
their  share  in  the  general  gains.  The  choice  lay  be- 
tween instant  and  urgent  resistance  and  permanent  de- 
basement. Most  fortunately  the  right  choice  was  made. 
These  combinations  commenced  of  necessity  in  secret, 
and  had  at  their  disposal  none  but  dark  and  violent 
methods.  In  1824  they  secured  a  legal  recognition,  and 
henceforward  were  carried  on  increasingly  in  the  light, 
for  comprehensive  and  worthy  ends.     This  movement 


LAV,  Oli-MO  I  'EM  EX  T.  237 

among  workmen  lias  been  an  essential  factor  in  those 
social  reforms  which  have  issued  in  a  repeal  of  the 
corn-laws,  and  in  extended  suffrage. 

These  combinations  in  more  recent  years  have  reached 
unskilled  labor,  and  this  class  of  laborers  are  passing 
through  the  earlier  experience  which  fell  to  skilled 
workmen.  Trades-unions  of  long  standing  have  become 
prudent,  conservative.  Anxious  to  retain  what  they 
have  won,  they  patiently  abide  their  time  for  farther 
gains.  The  trades-unions  in  England  represent  the  most 
efficient  forces  which  are  now  working,  in  a  profound 
and  irresistible  way,  for  the  common  welfare.  The 
form  of  existing  institutions  and  the  promise  of  the 
future  are  greatly  altered  by  them.1  Their  power  in 
calling  out  leaders  is  seen  in  such  men  as  John  Burns 
and  Tom  Mann.  The  wide  sympathy  they  evoke  is 
disclosed  in  such  a  fact  as  the  contribution  of  .$180,000 
by  Australia  to  the  strike  of  dock-hands.  This  en- 
larged power  of  workmen  is,  in  the  social  body,  like 
the  recovery  of  a  palsied  limb.  To  fail  to  understand 
the  true  value  of  the  labor-movement  is  to  fail  to 
see  the  forces  that  work  for  salvation  when  they  come. 
Gains  and  losses,  good  and  evil,  are  freely  mingled  here 
as  elsewhere ;  but  the  uprising  of  workmen  remains, 
none  the  less,  a  profoundly  renovating  fact. 

§  9.  A  growth  in  civil  rights  on  the  part  of  the  mass 
of  citizens  has  attended  the  labor-movement  in  England 
from  the  beginning  until  now.  Workmen  are  no  longer 
compelled  or  expected  to  act  without  counsel  and  with- 
out concert.  They  hold  a  yearly  congress  whose  object 
it  is  to  consult  on  current  questions,  to  watch  over  legis- 

1  "  English  Social  Movements,"  by  Robert  A.  Woods. 


238  ECONOMICS. 

lation,  and  to  urge  the  measures  they  desire.  The  stat- 
ute-book lias  thus  been  re-written  in  England  with  a 
wide  and  just  regard  to  the  interests  of  workmen  ;  the 
fundamental  principles  of  commercial  law  have  taken  on 
new  renderings  and  accepted  new  assertions  of  right. 
The  action  of  trades-unions  in  demanding  better  terms, 
or  even  a  boycott  to  secure  these  terms,  is  no  longer 
a  conspiracy  in  restriction  of  trade.  These  methods 
have  won  civil  acceptance,  and  gotten  to  themselves 
social  and  moral  force  in  each  instance  according  to 
their  merit.  They  are  seen  to  be  great  means  of  social 
renovation  which  anticipate  and  prevent  revolution. 
That  marvellous  political  history  by  which  England  has 
won  her  liberty  is  repeating  itself  in  her  social  institu- 
tions. Combination  is  f vee\y  accepted ;  the  principle  is 
recognized  —  a  principle  fundamental  in  social  renova- 
tion—  that  men  may  do  collectively  without  wrong  what 
they  may  do  without  wrong  individually. 

There  has  been  a  corresponding  gain  on  the  part  of 
English  workmen  in  political  power.  One  act  of  en- 
franchisement has  followed  another,  till  the  great  body 
of  laborers  are  in  full  possession,  with  their  fellow  citi- 
zens, of  political  power. 

A  similar  movement  in  this  country  has  been  slower 
and  less  successful,  because  we  started  with  more  civil 
and  political  rights,  and  assumed  the  work  of  recon- 
struction to  be  already  done ;  because  the  pressure  of 
economic  and  social  motives,  impelling  workmen  to  com- 
bination, has  been  much  less  severe ;  because  the  domi- 
nant money-making  tendency  in  this  country  has  stood 
by  certain  principles  —  like  the  freedom  of  contract  — 
as  undeniable  social  axioms;  and  because,  in  our  large 


LA  B  OR-MO  YEMEN  T.  239 

cities,  where  labor-movements  take  their  rise,  trades- 
unions  have  embraced  many  nationalities,  and  have  been 
handled  with  a  far  less  cautious  and  conservative  tem- 
per than  in  England.  Native  American  enterprise  and 
independence  have  frequently  found  themselves  at  war, 
in  sentiment  and  method,  with  an  alien  and  arrogant 
and  ignorant  temper. 

In  consequence  of  the  diverse  relations  of  different 
States,  and  an  independent  growth  of  law  in  each  State, 
the  modification  of  common  law  has  proceeded  slowly. 
Only  a  minority  of  the  States  have  recognized  the  right 
of  workmen  to  combine.  "  The  United  States  and  eleven 
States  have  sanctioned  labor  organizations."  '  The  te- 
nacity with  which  the  courts  of  the  United  States  ad- 
here to  common  law,  and  the  commercial  character  of 
the  interests  committed  to  their  protection,  have  also 
restrained  the  action  of  trades-unions.  The  public  wel- 
fare can  least  of  all  bear  the  freedom  of  labor  in  connec- 
tion with  railways.  The  laws,  in  some  of  the  States, 
go  so  far  as  to  discriminate  against  workmen.  In  Wis- 
consin one  participating  in  a  boycott  may  be  punished 
by  imprisonment  for  one  year,  or  by  a  fine  of  $500. 
An  employer  associated  with  black-listing  may  be  pun- 
ished by  a  penalty  of  one  month's  imprisonment,  or 
a  fine  of  $50. 

In  France  trades-unions  were  made  legal  in  1884, 
and  in  1890  it  was  even  proposed  to  forbid  lock-outs. 

Trades-unions  have  been  successful  in  securing  a  rise 
of  wages.  This  rise,  with  the  increase  in  purchasing 
power  in  wages,  has  altered  the  condition  of  workmen 
very  much  for  the  better,  and  gives  promise  of  perma- 

1  "  Report  of  the  Federal  Labor  Commission." 


240  ECONOMICS. 

nent  improvement.  For  the  first  time  in  the  history  of 
the  world,  there  has  been  an  indication  that  the  world  is 
made  for  man,  and  that  in  due  time  men,  as  one  house- 
hold, will  take  possession  of  it.  The  dawn  of  the  day 
is  distinctly  seen,  and  that  it  shall  not  again  be  overcast 
is  the  primary  charge  of  trades-unions.  It  is  not  neces- 
sary that  we  should  attribute  all  of  this  immense  gain 
to  the  concerted  action  of  workmen.  It  is  sufficient  to 
make  this  labor-movement  of  the  utmost  importance,  if 
it  has  been  a  leading  cause,  with  other  causes,  rendering 
them  fruitful  in  this  grand  and  comprehensive  result. 

A  most  manifest  gain  of  these  organizations  has  been 
the  spirit  of  counsel,  sympathy,  and  assistance  they 
have  called  out  in  their  members.  The  ends  pursued 
by  them  have  been  increasingly  self-helpful,  and  less 
and  less  belligerent.  The  educating  power  of  this 
action  has  been  incalculable.  Trades-unions  have  come 
to  understand,  at  least  partially,  the  stern  limits  set  by 
the  facts  of  the  commercial  world,  and  to  shape  their 
action  to  the  possibilities  of  each  particular  case.  This 
lesson  of  the  very  slow  submission  of  natural  laws  to 
our  manipulation  —  a  lesson  of  first  moment  to  us  all  in 
dealing  with  social  problems  —  has  not  as  yet  been  com- 
pletely learned,  nor  learned  without  bitter  experience ; 
but,  like  so  much  knowledge  which  comes  slowly,  it  is 
worth  all  the  suffering  undergone  in  securing  it.  Trades- 
unions  have  shown  themselves  more  and  more  cautious 
with  advancing  strength.  The  growth  of  sympathy  by 
means  of  counsel  and  the  disposition  to  multiply  the 
sources  of  secondary  relief  are  seen  in  their  expendi- 
tures. 

The  Amalgamated  Society  of  Carpenters  and  Joiners, 


L  A I)  0  R  -310  VEMEN  T.  241 

with  a  membership  in  English-speaking  lands  of  22,935, 
and  in  the  United  States  of  1,127,  in  the  year  1885  ex- 
pended on  the  objects  mentioned  the  following  sums  :  — 

Unemployed $174,549.70 

Seeking  Situations 1,471.07 

Tools 7,498.50 

Sick 83,597.42 

Accidents 8,750.00 

Superannuated 12,909.70 

Funerals 14,568.20 

Strikes 23,127.601 

There  are  both  instruction  and  pathos  in  the  large 
sum  devoted  to  funerals.  It  indicates  the  narrowness 
of  the  means  of  living  that  could  not  bear  any  extra 
strain,  and  it  reveals  that  sense  of  the  decencies  of  life, 
and  that  tender  household  affection,  which  would  not 
allow  loved  ones  to  lack  any  suitable  expression  of 
regard. 

The  most  undeniable  gain  of  all  incident  to  these 
unions  has  been  the  awakening  among  workmen  a 
spirit  of  self-reliance,  a  disposition  to  look  to  their  own 
welfare  in  a  wide  way,  a  desire  to  find  out  what  justice 
is  and  to  claim  it.  It  is  surprising  that  any  critic  of 
the  labor-movement  should  overlook  this  immense  gain. 
No  class  is  hopeless  that  strives  to  help  itself  ;  every 
class  is  hopeless  that  lacks  self-help.  The  first  effort 
toward  regeneration  anywhere  must  be  directed  to 
this  very  point,  the  calling  out  of  self-directed  effort. 
When  this  spirit  has  appeared  among  workmen,  many, 
instead  of  greeting  it  as  the  sure  precursor  of  better 
things,  have  occupied  their  attention,  chiefly  and  regret- 

1  E.  W.  Bemis's  Political  Science  Quarterly,  vol.  ii.  p.  277. 


242  ECONOMICS. 

fully,  with  the  disturbances  and  mistakes  incident  to  it. 
These  mistakes  have  not  been  greater  than  we  ought 
to  have  anticipated,  not  greater  than  belonged  from  the 
nature  of  the  case  to  those  so  long  forgotten,  and 
crowded  down  under  harsh  economic  law,  harshly  ap- 
plied. Workmen,  like  all  of  us,  are  entitled  to  their 
mistakes.  Let  those  who  are  without  sin  cast  the  first 
stone.  The  entire  record  of  the  world  is  one  ever 
renewed  error,  and  its  slow  correction.  No  class  has 
less  right  than  the  ruling  class  to  plead  against  work- 
men their  mistaken  and  passionate  methods.  To  one 
who'  knows  how  painfully  the  world  progresses,  these 
failures  are  as  nothing  in  the  presence  of  real  growth. 
Take  the  single  subject  of  finance,  how  wastefully  has 
the  race  scattered  its  wealth  along  the  way,  like  gram 
spilled  from  a  loose  and  jolting  wagon. 

We  may  well  enough  enumerate  these  errors  as  a 
means  of  correcting  them,  but  not  as  bringing  discredit 
on  the  efforts  with  which  they  are  associated.  They 
are  mere  sparks  scattered  by  the  heavy  blows  under 
which  the  massive  framework  of  social  order  is  welded. 
Nor  have  these  efforts  of  workmen  been  lost  on  em- 
ployers in  teaching  them  first  lessons  in  the  brother- 
hood of  men.  There  has  been  a  very  natural,  but  very 
flippant,  logic  prevalent  among  managers  by  which, 
without  serious  distrust,  they  have  appropriated  the 
world.  Never  were  tyrants  less  aware  of  their  tyranny. 
The  additions  to  production  by  good  management  have 
been  conceived  as  belonging  to  the  manager.  He  was 
to  sweep  in  the  gains  of  invention,  discovery,  combina- 
tion, the  growing  momentum  of  productive  forces.  The 
stars    in    their    courses    were    to   tight   for   him.       The 


TUE  CLAIMS   OF  MANAGEMENT.  243 

manager  has  felt,  and  justified  his  feeling  by  a  smatter- 
ing of  Economics,  that  the  wages  of  the  workman  had 
been  honestly  paid  him,  why  should  the  workman  inter- 
fere further  with  that  forward  movement  of  the  world 
he  did  not  institute  and  ought  not  to  restrain. 

The  better  view,  that  the  gains  of  civilization  are 
common  gains,  that,  as  in  an  army,  good  leadership 
merely  develops  the  powers  of  all,  that  victory  is  the 
victory  of  all,  that  the  resources  of  the  world  are  com- 
mon resources,  its  opportunities  open  opportunities  — 
this  view,  profoundly  moral,  and  because  moral  woven 
deeply  also  into  all  permanent  and  permanently  profit- 
able economic  relations,  has  been  slow  to  find  its  way 
into  the  minds  of  employers,  hard  pressed  by  rivals  and 
flushed  with  immediate  success.  The  wage-earner,  as  a 
man,  as  an  independent  factor  in  production,  has  the 
right,  acting  singly  and  collectively,  to  push  his  way  in, 
and  share  the  successes  of  civilization.  How  far  and 
in  what  way  this  can  be  done  is  the  one  problem  of 
society,  and  cannot  be  settled  by  any  familiar  saws  or 
short  ways  that  are  involved  in  the  uncorrected  forms 
of  existing  social  life. 

The  assertion,  "  I  will  manage  my  own  business," 
pertinent  as  it  may  be  when  one  knows  exactly  what 
one's  own  business  is,  is  exceedingly  impertinent  when 
one  has  swept  into  one's  own  concerns  all  the  business 
of  the  world.  If  no  part  of  the  business  of  production 
belongs  to  the  workmen,  save  that  of  a  hireling,  he  is 
ruled  out  of  a  world  in  which  the  activities  of  men  are 
chiefly  developed.  The  control  which  shall  fall  to  the 
several  parties  to  production  cannot  be  settled  by  the 
assertion  of  any  one  of  them.      As  the  labor  of  the  em- 


244  ECONOMICS. 

ployee  is  a  universal  and  essential  factor  in  tlie  common 
profiting,  he  must  be  left  at  liberty,  individually  and  col- 
lectively, to  watch  over  all  the  interests  involved  in  this 
contribution.    This  fact  employers  are  learning  to  accept. 

It  is  not  in  order  to  say  to  the  workman,  "  If  you 
do  not  like  the  wages  offered,  go  elsewhere."  There  may 
be  no  elsewhere ;  and  if  there  is,  by  what  right  does 
the  manager  take  to  himself,  in  this  absolute  way,  the 
present  opportunity  ?  It  is  the  duty  of  society  to  con- 
cede to  the  workman  the  use  of  the  conditions  for  resis- 
tance of  which  he  is  in  possession,  and  the  duty  of 
the  workman  to  use  these  conditions  in  harmony  with 
the  common  welfare.  Combination  may  make  chances 
which  were  of  no  value  to  him,  acting  alone,  of  great 
value.  The  employer  has  taugbt  him  this  lesson  of  com- 
bination. His  accumulated  strength  is  due  chiefly  to 
combination.  It  has  been  this  very  fact  which  has 
made  the  weakness  of  the  individual  Avorkman  so  con- 
spicuous, and  left  him,  in  the  presence  of  overshadow- 
ing corporations,  no  independent  employer  to  whom  he 
could  turn.  Shall  it  be  granted  to  capital  to  combine 
indefinitely,  and  shall  the  right  of  combination,  made 
necessary  to  the  workman  by  this  very  fact  of  the  accu- 
mulation of  capital  in  single  hands,  be  denied  him  ? 
Management  has  increasingly  grouped  workmen  in  one 
class  as  "  hands ;  "  shall  not  these  hands  be  at  liberty 
to  act  together,  even  as  they  are  acted  on  ?  Shall  they 
suffer  the  disadvantages  of  this  levelling  process,  and  be 
denied  its  advantages  ?  Shall  the  era  of  individualism 
pass  by  for  the  employer,  and  not  for  the  employee  ? 

Black-listing  has  in  many  cases  been  the  prelude  of 
boycotting,    and    that,  too,  with    far    less   justification. 


EVILS   OF  THE  LABOR-MOVEMENT.  245 

Black-listing  is  the  resource  of  the  strong  against  the 
weak ;  boycotting  the  resource  of  the  weak  against  the 
strong.  We  may  well  strive  to  escape  these  wasteful 
and  pernicious  measures,  but  the  very  first  step  toward 
escape  is  a  recognition  of  the  claims  of  justice  in  the 
premises.  The  attitude  of  management  toward  labor  is 
sometimes  put  as  a  survival  of  the  fittest.  But  this  is  a 
virtual  appeal,  under  the  analogy  of  the  lower  forms  of 
life,  to  strength  ;  and  may  not  the  workman  well  test 
this  point  of  power  before  he  concedes  it  ? 

The  supreme  profiting  that  has  come  to  society  from 
trades-unions  is  this  very  fact,  that  all  the  deeper  ques- 
tions of  justice  and  social  construction  are  broached  by 
them  and  put  in  the  line  of  settlement.  The  world  is 
for  man  is  the  comprehensive  idea  which  underlies  the 
labor-movement. 

§  10.  We  turn  to  the  evils  which  have  accompanied 
this  effort,  that  we  may  estimate  them  truly  and  learn 
to  escape  them.  The  weapons  which  have  made  trades- 
unions  formidable,  strikes  and  boycotts,  have,  very  nat- 
urally provoked  severe  criticism.  They  are  grave  evils, 
but  the  responsibility  for  their  existence  rests  on  the 
community  collectively.  In  any  given  instance,  wrong 
on  the  part  of  management,  unreasonable  claims  on 
the  part  of  labor,  an  unconcessive  temper  in  the  two 
parties,  a  fretful  and  inconsiderate  temper  in  the  com- 
munity, determine  the  apportionment  of  guilt.  Cer- 
tainly, under  any  just  judgment,  the  larger  share  of 
fault  will  not  be  found,  as  a  rule,  to  rest  with  workmen. 
A  strike  is  a  softened  form  of  war,  and,  like  war,  in- 
volves wrong  somewhere.  Like  war,  also,  it  is  better 
than  abject  submission.     The  patience,   firmness,   self- 


246  ECONOMICS. 

denial,  with  which  workmen  have  again  and  again  borne 
the  very  unequal  strife  are  worthy  of  all  honor.  The 
gains  of  strikes  on  the  part  of  workmen  have  been  far 
greater  than  their  losses.  This  proposition  is  probably 
true,  economic  interests  alone  considered;  it  is  undeni- 
ably true  if  we  reckon  in  the  social  and  moral  strength 
that  have  been  won  in  connection  with  them. 

The  immediate  losses  of  strikes  have  often  been  very 
great.  The  cost  of  the  spinners'  strike  in  Manchester, 
England,  in  1829,  was  estimated  at  $  1,250,000.  The 
strike  at  Ashton  and  Stay  lay  bridge,  in  1830,  was  at- 
tended with  corresponding  loss.  The  strike  of  cotton- 
spinners  at  Lancashire  in  1893  included  125,000  work- 
men, lasted  twenty  weeks,  and  involved  a  sacrifice  of 
something  like  $10,000,000.  It  resulted  in  an  agreement 
that  no  change  should  be  made  in  wages  at  any  time 
greater  than  5  per  cent,  nor  more  than  once  in  any  one 
year.  The  strike,  in  the  same  year,  of  miners  in  the 
coal-mines  of  England  was  marked  by  a  very  heroic 
endurance  of  suffering,  and  was  attended  by  an  esti- 
mated loss  of  $30,000,000.  Strikes  are  the  hard  con- 
ditions which  society  puts  upon  workmen,  but  are  not 
too  high  a  price  to  pay  for  progress,  if  it  cannot  be 
otherwise  secured.  Employers  and  workmen  alike  have 
come  to  dread  strikes,  and  counsel  and  concession  have 
steadily  gained  ground.  Seven  of  the  largest  trades- 
unions  in  England  spent  in  1882  only  2  per  cent  of 
their  funds  on  strikes  ;  and  trades-unions,  as  a  whole, 
spend  less  than  10  per  cent  in  this  direction.  Mis- 
chievous as  strikes  always  are,  and  mistaken  as  they 
often  are,  it  may  yet  be  doubted  whether  workmen 
have  ever  spent  their  voluntary  contributions  to  more 


EVILS   OF  TIIE  LABOR-MOVEMENt.  247 

advantage  than  tliis  10  per  cent,  all  things  considered, 
on  strikes.  While  it  is  far  more  economical  not  to  fall 
sick,  being  sick,  the  medicine  that  restores  health  is 
cheap. 

That  the  errors  of  violent  methods  lie  as  frequently 
with  employers  as  employees  is  indicated  by  the  report 
of  the  Commissioner  of  Labor  of  the  United  States  for 
1887.  Of  the  strikes  which  occurred  from  1881  to  1887, 
46.52  per  cent  succeeded,  and  13.47  per  cent  partially 
succeeded.  Of  the  lock-outs  during  the  same  period, 
25.47  per  cent  succeeded,  and  8.58  per  cent  partially 
succeeded.  This  is  convincing  proof  of  greater  forbear- 
ance on  the  part  of  workmen  than  on  the  part  of  mana- 
gers, when  we  remember  how  unequal  these  conflicts 
are.  The  employer  may  easily  win  by  superior  strength  ; 
the  workmen  can  hardly  win  otherwise  than  by  superior 
right. 

The  very  unworthy  way  in  which  wealthy  corporations 
may  unite  in  breaking  down  the  claims  of  the  weak  is 
pathetically  told  in  "  The  Strike  of  Millionaires  against 
Miners,"  by  H.  I).  Lloyd. 

A  second  objection  to  trades-unions  has  been  the  bad 
temper  called  out  by  them  between  employers  and  em- 
ployees. We  can  attach  no  great  weight  to  this  objec^ 
tion,  momentous  as  is  the  evil  in  itself.  Good  feeling 
that  does  not  rest  on  justice  has  no  profound  value. 
Peace  must  often  be  displaced  by  "the  sword  in  the  pur- 
suit of  righteousness.  Respect  and  the  deference  of 
fear  are  far  more  wholesome  between  employers  and 
employees  than  an  indolent  good-will,  the  product  of 
weakness  on  the  part  of  labor. 

The   strife   between  union    and  non-union   men  occa- 


248  ECONOMICS. 

sioned  by  these  combinations  is  a  more  serious  evil.  In 
the  best  organized  trades,  hardly  half  the  workmen  in  a 
given  occupation  belong  to  them.  A  certain  class  of 
self-reliant,  independent  workmen  prefer  to  remain 
aloof.  For  them  the  union  means  a  sacrifice.  A  larger 
number  of  careless  and  indifferent  workmen  fail  to  unite. 
In  good  times  they  do  not  feel  the  need  of  aid ;  in  bad 
times  the  unions  are  unwilling  to  receive  them.  It 
is  impossible  that  hostility  should  not  spring  up  be- 
tween union  and  non-union  men.  Union  men,  always 
in  their  own  eyes,  and  often  in  fact,  are  contending 
for  the  common  cause ;  non-union  men  not  only  do 
not  contribute  to  this  effort,  they  often  make  it  futile  by 
a  blind  competition.  When  a  strike  is  in  progress 
attended  with  much  suffering,  and  non-union  workmen 
accept  the  rejected  service,  they  are  taking  labor  they 
have  not  themselves  secured,  and  by  doing  so  are  aiding 
to  bring  about  a  reduction  of  wages.  Human  life,  in  all 
its  trying  experiences,  hardly  offers  another  case  more 
provocative  of  bitter  feeling.  The  case  is  one  in  which 
the  plea  of  industrial  liberty  is  brought  in  a  deceptive 
way  against  social  progress.  The  hostility  is  like  that 
which,  in  our  own  Revolution,  was  felt  against  those 
who  would  not  take  part  in  it.  The  individual,  in  a 
general  movement  for  the  public  welfare,  must  concede 
something  of  his  own  personal  liberty.  A  constraining, 
organic  force  gets  hold  of  him,  and  he  must  respond. 

That  trades-unions  are  not  always  wisely  guided  is 
a  matter  of  course.  The  "  walking  delegate  "  —  whose 
influence  is  often  exaggerated — may  be  a  nuisance,  but 
even  then  a  nuisance  of  much  the  same  order  as  the  po- 
litical boss  to  whom  so  many  of  us  submit  with  so  much 


EVILS    OF   THE  LABOR-MOVEMENT.  249 

complaisance.  The  one  has  the  same  right  to  be  as  the 
other.  They  both  may  usurp  the  function  of  guidance. 
Sometimes,  as  notably  in  the  building-trades  in  New 
York  City,  —  a  city  in  which  many  forms  of  social  tyr- 
anny are  rife  —  the  general  prosperity  has  been  narrowed 
and  cramped  by  the  captious  action  of  trades-unions. 

They  also  accept  some  unjust  and  unwise  methods. 
There  has  been  a  disposition  to  restrict  trade,  and  to 
secure  high  wages  at  the  general  expense.  But  there 
has  also  been  an  increasing  disposition  to  recognize 
the  claims  of  women  for  equal  wages  for  equal  work. 
Trades-unions  have  not  always  been  disposed  to  recognize 
diversity  of  pay  as  connected  with  different  efficiency 
in  workmen.  This  has  arisen  from  not  attaching  suffi- 
cient importance  to  individual  enterprise,  and  also  from 
the  difficulty  of  an  adequate  estimate  of  it  under  the 
uniform  rules  to  which  combination  necessarily  tends. 
Success,  on  the  part  of  trades-unions,  will  help  to  restore 
liberty,  and  with  it  a  fuller  recognition  of  individual 
rights.  It  belongs  to  every  conflict  for  liberty  to  sacri- 
fice liberty  somewhat, 

Trades-unions,  as  yet  but  partially  instructed  in  eco- 
nomic principles,  are  liable  to  urge  bad  laws.  They  have 
looked  with  disfavor  on  the  employment  of  criminals  in 
production.  The  evils  to  society  as  a  whole  which  would 
attend  on  enforced  idleness  would  be  far  greater  than 
those  which  arise  from  prison  products.  These  products 
constitute  only  about  one-fifth  of  one  per  cent  of  the 
aggregate  of  products.  Unless  carelessly  handled,  they 
have  very  little  power  even  of  local  injury,  while  the 
general  growth  of  wealth  incident  to  them  is  like  all 
other  wealth,  a  positive  gain  in  production. 


250  ECONOMICS. 

All  these  errors  are  in  harmony  with  the  ordinary 
terms  of  human  discipline.  What  we  learn  of  our 
relations  in  society  is  attended  by  most  humiliating  mis- 
takes. The  labor-movement  is  a  revolutionary  fact.  It 
subjects  a  large  fraction  of  society  to  a  new,  exacting, 
and  wholesome  discipline  —  a  discipline  allied  to  that 
which  has  hitherto  fallen  to  the  minority,  and  by  which 
the  minority  have  won  whatever  advantage  in  wisdom 
belongs  to  them. 

§  11.  The  labor-movement  has  aimed  to  correct  the 
evils  of  the  wages-system  within  the  system  itself. 
Other  methods,  as  co-operation,  profit-sharing,  loan-as- 
sociation, have  striven  to  do  the  same  thing  by  displa- 
cing the  system ;  by  modifying  it ;  by  supplement- 
ing it. 

Co-operation  strives  to  put  between  management  and 
labor  another  and  better  relation.  Labor,  management, 
and  capital  are  united  in  the  same  persons,  who  share 
between  them  the  common  gaius.  Principles  of  division 
must  still  be  recognized,  more  or  less  in  accordance 
with  those  current  in  the  community ;  but  the  producer 
is  encouraged  to  participate  in  the  several  parts  of 
production.  Co-operation  may  be  applied  either  to 
traffic  or  to  manufacture.  It  has  succeeded  more  per- 
fectly, and  found  more  ready  extension,  in  the  former 
field.  As  business  increases  in  complexity  and  difficulty, 
co-operation  is  less  able  to  cope  with  its  demands. 
Those  branches  of  production  which  require  no  unusual 
powers,  are  attended  with  slight  risks,  and  prosper  by 
honesty  and  a  diligent  attention  to  details,  are  best 
fitted  to  co-operation. 

Robert  Owen  introduced  co-operation  at  New  Lanark 


CO-OPERATION.  251 

in  1814.  It  has  prospered  more  in  England  than  else- 
where, and  more  in  commerce  than  in  other  directions. 
The  Rochdale  plan  harmonizes  and  unites  its  essential 
features.  The  property  involved  in  the  given  under- 
taking is  owned  by  shareholders.  The  shares  are  small, 
and  each  shareholder  has  a  single  vote.  The  prices 
charged  for  goods  are  customary  prices.  The  profits  are 
divided  between  the  shareholders  and  the  purchasers, 
and  are  apportioned  between  purchasers  according  to  the 
amounts  purchased.  The  buyer,  on  whom  the  success 
of  the  business  largely  depends,  is  bound  to  it  by  being 
a  partaker  in  its  profits. 

There  are  now  about  1,000,000  persons  in  England 
Connected  with  co-operation.  The  total  annual  business 
of  co-operative  societies  in  the  United  Kingdom  had 
reached,  in  1891,  $190,000,000,  and  the  net  profit  to 
members  $20,000,000.1  It  has  been  a  ground  of  com- 
plaint in  England  that  co-operative  establishments,  in- 
cidentally engaged  in  manufacture,  have,  in  this  branch 
of  their  business,  retained  the  wages-system. 

Co-operation  in  America  has  been  less  extended  and 
less  permanent  than  in  England.-  The  conditions  here 
are  not  as  favorable  as  in  England.  The  pressure  of 
motives  hitherto  has  not  been  as  great.  Society  is  more 
changeable,  and  business  is  more  fluctuating. 

It  is  the  first  and  chief  advantage  of  co-operation  that 
it  fully  interests  and  unites  all  the  agents  of  production 
engaged  in  any  given  undertaking.  Society  is  thereby 
more  thoroughly  and  fortunately  organized  under  this 
method  than  by  the  payment  of  wages.     Social  construc- 

1  "  English  Social  Movements,"  Robert  A.  Woods,  p.  34. 

2  A.  T.  Hadley,  Forum,  vol.  viii.  p.  53, 


252  ECONOMICS. 

tion,  instead  of  being  broken  up  by  business  relations,  is 
strengthened  by  them. 

Co-operation  is  also  a  favorable  discipline  to  those  en- 
gaged in  it.  A  great  difficulty  in  the  wages-system  is 
that  it  tends  to  make  the  laborer  improvident,  and  im- 
patient of  delay.  He  takes  no  risks,  and  lives  from 
hand  to  mouth.  The  necessity  of  a  provision  for  the 
future  does  not  sufficiently  impress  him,  and  is  not  deep- 
ened by  the  constant  discipline  of  accepting  this  and 
that  self-denial  in  behalf  of  the  success  of  the  business 
in  which  he  is  engaged.  Robust  physical  endowments 
often  enhance  this  easy-going  temper.  Workmen  are 
reluctant  to  make  any  provision  for  the  future.  The 
North-western  Railway  in  England,  giving  occupation 
to  5,000  skilled  workmen  at  Crewe,  wished  to  set  apart  a 
fixed  percentage  of  wages  for  old  age.  The  workmen, 
under  the  two  feelings  of  indifference  and  distrust,  re- 
sisted the  effort.  Other  companies  have  met  with  the 
same  difficulty.  Co-operation  calls  for  forecast  and 
patience.  Unlike  the  wages-system,  it  includes  workmen 
in  the  educational  results  of  business.  The  lack  of  in- 
terest and  the  want  of  economy  in  workmen  are  not 
merely  wasteful  in  the  use  they  make  of  their  own 
wages,  they  are  still  more  Avasteful  in  their  effect  on  the 
productive  process  as  one  whole.  Management  is  called 
on  to  contend,  oftentimes  unsiiccessfully,  with  the  in- 
difference and  negligence  of  workmen.  Very  little  of 
the  wages  of  workmen  returns  to  production  to  enlarge 
it.  It  falls  to  one  class  chiefly  to  maintain  the  economy 
which  provides  capital,  and  cherishes  the  general  pros- 
perity. To  secure  in  workmen  a  painstaking  content- 
ment with  the  economic  and  social  work  which  falls  to 


CO-OPERATION.  258 

them  is  a  great  achievement.  This  gain  has  shown  it- 
self markedly  in  England.  Co-operation  has  become 
with  many  a  kind  of  religion,  and  quite  altered  their 
relations  to  each  other  and  to  society.1 

Co-operation,  when  successful,  tends  to  diffused  pros- 
perity. It  promotes  thrift  by  gathering  capital  in  small 
amounts  and  returning  it  at  once  to  production.  It 
serves  also  to  soften  the  general  asperity  of  business  by 
showing  workmen  conclusively  what  the  difficulties  and 
conditions  of  profit-making  are,  and  establishing  for 
them  practical  standards  of  judgment.  There  is  dis- 
illusion in  co-operation.  It  separates  the  ideal  and 
fanciful  in  production  from  the  practical  and  real.  It 
compels  men  to  meet  each  other  and  meet  the  facts  on 
a  working  basis. 

The  difficulties  of  co-operation  are  closely  associated 
with  its  excellences.  Management  is  under-estimated 
in  its  importance  by  workmen.  They  are  not  willing  to 
allow  a  sufficient  reward  to  secure  it.  In  a  co-operative 
establishment,  the  division  between  management  and 
labor  is  made  by  diversity  of  pay  for  different  services. 
Such  an  establishment  cannot  altogether  escape  the  eco- 
nomic forces  operative  in  the  community  at  large,  occa- 
sioning a  wide  distinction  between  the  power  to  labor 
and  the  power  to  direct  labor.  The  notion  of  equality, 
applied  in  a  crude  way,  interferes  among  workmen  with 
the  liberty  which  belongs  to  unusual  and  to  superior 
gifts.  The  excellent  management  which  has,  in  some 
instances,  been  secured  in  England  in  behalf  of  co-opera- 
tion has  been  a  voluntary  contribution  from  those  de- 

1  "Industrial  Co-operation  in  England,"  F.  G.  Peabody,  Forum, 
vol.  viii.  p.  274. 


254  ECONOMICS. 

voted  to  the  cause.  The  moral  and  social  motives  have 
overruled  economic  ones.  This  result  is  at  once  a  gain 
and  a  danger.  Workmen  should  be  willing  to  concede 
more,  and  managers  should  be  asked  to  concede  less, 
than  the  present  state  of  opinion  calls  for. 

Co-operation,  especially  in  manufacture,  demands  more 
firmness  of  purpose,  more  sustained  effort,  a  more  con- 
cessive organic  temper,  than  now  belong  to  workmen. 
"Workmen  are  not  prepared,  either  by  previous  economy 
or  acquired  patience,  to  wait  for  results.  A  co-operative 
concern  depends  on  the  harmony  and  good-will  of  so 
many,  that  it  is  peculiarly  open  to  accident.  It  has 
little  staying  power.  This  fact  goes  far  to  explain  the 
comparative  failure  of  co-operation  in  this  country. 

The  very  discipline,  therefore,  which  co-operation 
brings,  stands  at  first  in  the  way  of  its  success.  It 
shows  this  difficulty  in  common  with  all  improved  social 
methods.  The  better  system  must  have  a  better  temper, 
and  cannot  create  it  at  once.  The  enlarged  opportunity 
and  the  enlarged  power  slowly  come  forward  together, 
with  many  actions  and  reactions.1 

Though  co-operation  has  not  fulfilled  the  dream  of 
those  who  conceived  it,  it  has  been  an  important  measure 
with  other  measures  in  disclosing  to  us  the  true  social 
problem,  and  in  pushing  us  toward  its  solution.  It  has 
helped  to  give  us  a  better  standard  of  possibilities,  and 
shown  us  that  distribution,  as  it  has  actually  taken 
place,  is  not  as  unjust  as  we  may  have  thought  it  to  be. 

§  12.    Profit-sharing,    while    somewhat    allied    to   co- 

1  "Co-operative  Distribution  in  Great  Britain,"  17th  Report  of 
the  Labor  Bureau  of  Mass.  "Studies  in  History  and  Political 
Science,"   sixth  series. 


PROFIT-SHARING.  255 

operation,  does  not  break,  in  anything  like  the  same 
degree,  with  current  commercial  methods.  It  originates 
with  management,  and  takes  the  form  of  a  bid  on  its 
part  for  more  good-will,  for  a  more  hearty  concurrence 
of  effort.  The  control  of  the  business  involved  is  still 
left  wholly  in  the  hands  of  the  manager,  while  a  share 
of  the  profits  goes  to  the  workman  in  addition  to  his 
wages.  There  is  a  qualified  partnership  instituted  be- 
tween labor  and  management.  Profit-sharing  is  flexible 
in  form,  according  to  the  temper  of  those  who  institute 
it ;  yet  it  has  some  well-recognized  principles.  Profits 
are  not  divided  except  as  they  exceed  a  moderately 
remunerative  sum,  and  are  proportioned  among  work- 
men according  to  the  value  and  time  of  service.  Losses 
are  borne,  in  the  first  instance,  by  the  management, 
though  a  fund  is  usually  "set  apart  to  meet  them.  The 
annual  payment  to  this  fund  is  made  prior  to  the  divis- 
ion of  profits,  and  reduces  by  so  much  the  share  of 
workmen.  There  is  frequently  a  fund  for  the  superan- 
nuated. An  excellence  of  profit-sharing  lies  in  the 
many  degrees  and  forms  it  can  take  on  in  concession  to 
the  sentiments  of  those  engaged  in  it.  It  is  important 
that  it  should  not  bear  the  appearance  of  a  charity,  but 
rest  on  a  sound  business  basis  ;  that  its  benefits  should 
accrue  to  both  parties.  If  there  is  any  want  of  definite- 
ness  in  its  terms,  this  fact  is  very  likely  to  give  rise  to 
distrust  and  ill-will. 

The  great  economic  advantage  of  profit-sharing  is 
found  in  the  good-will  it  inspires,  and  in  the  increased 
interest  and  effort  that  attend  upon  it.  Profit-sharing, 
so  long  as  this  good  feeling  exists,  converts  moral  con- 
ditions into  economic  forces,  and  economic  forces  into 


256  economics. 

moral  conditions.  Profit-sharing  is  a  less  thorough, 
method  than  co-operation,  but  it  is  also  a  much  less 
difficult  one.  Business  can  easily  slide  into  it,  and  out 
of  it  with  no  grave  losses.  The  ordinary  relations  of 
labor  and  management  are  not  much  altered  by  it. 
Enterprise  still  has  its  entire  freedom,  and  the  laborer 
incurs  no  unusual  risk.  The  good  feeling  called  out  by 
profit-sharing  is  more  organic  in  society  as  one  whole 
than  that  incident  to  co-operation. 

The  chief  obstacles  to  profit-sharing  are  the  unwilling- 
ness of  employers  to  make  what  they  regard  as  con- 
cessions to  employees,  and  the  distrust  of  employers  by 
employees.  Managers,  as  a  rule,  do  not  believe  in  the 
productive  power  of  liberal  methods,  and  are  reluctant 
to  concede  the  patience  they  require.  Workmen  are 
slow  to  accept  as  genuine,  proffers  that  seem  to  turn  on 
the  good-will  of  managers.  The  blind  and  distrustful 
temper  of  traditional  ways  is  liable,  on  either  side,  to 
anticipate  and  overpower  the  better  impulse. 

Profit-sharing  started  in  Prance  with  Laclaire,  in 
1S42,  a  painter  and  decorator  in  Paris.  It  was  very 
successful  in  his  hands,  as  it  is  likely  to  be  with  those 
who  thoroughly  believe  in  it.  It  has  prevailed  exten- 
sively in  Prance,  some  examples  of  it  running  through 
many  years.  It  has  been  less  successful  and  more  fitful 
in  this  country.  Our  fluctuating  economic  conditions 
and  our  volatile  temper  have  tended  to  an  easy  discon- 
tinuance of  any  difficult  effort.  We  are  slow  to  yield 
the  simplicity  and  independence  of  the  wages-system,  in 
which  every  man  cares  for  himself,  pockets  his  gains, 
endures  a  share  of  the  losses,  and  adds  the  remainder  to 
the  common  heap  of  disasters. 


PROFIT-  SUA  I!  TXG.  2f>7 

In  profit-sharing,  as  in  co-operation,  the  difficulties 
are  incident  to  the  very  nature  of  the  gains.  The  gains 
are  good-will  and  confidence  ;  the  difficulties  lie  in  call- 
ing out  that  good-will  and  confidence.  The  good-will  of 
the  employer  is  not  sufficiently  strong ;  the  confidence  of 
the  workman  is  smothered  in  a  dull  atmosphere  of  mis- 
apprehensions. The  virtues  on  neither  side  are  vigorous 
enough  to  beget  reciprocal  virtues  on  the  other  side. 

The  faults  on  either  hand  are  quick  to  evoke  those 
on  the  other  hand.  The  midway  line  of  contact,  coun- 
sel, concession,  is  one  which  both  parties  approach  with 
timidity.  Messrs.  Briggs,  miners  in  the  north  of  Eng- 
land, introduced  profit-sharing  in  part  as  a  means  of 
weakening  the  hold  of  trades-unions.  Workmen  with 
a  sound  instinct  have  felt  that  complete  organization, 
within  themselves  was  a  more  reliable  source  of  strength 
than  the  concessions  of  capitalists,  especially  when  these 
concessions  were  directed  against  this  independent 
power. 

Profit-sharing  carries  with  it  this  high  advantage, 
that  it  is  a  social  and  ethical,  as  well  as  an  economic, 
reconciliation.  It  disposes  workmen  to  more  interest, 
economy,  and  diligence  in  their  work.  It  gives  them 
the  sense  of  a  real  participation  in  the  achievements  of 
production,  and  it  serves  lo  divide  more  equitably  the 
common  gain.  When  successful,  it  leads  to  a  more 
direct  interest  on  the  part  of  the  manager  in  his  co- 
laborers,  and  also  to  a  wise  recognition  of  the  value  of 
moral  forces  and  sound  social  conditions  in  production.' 

§  13.    In  addition  to  those  schemes  which  have  sought 

i  "Profit-Sharing,"  X.  V.  Gilman;  also  "Profit-Sharing,"  17th 
Annual  Report  of  Labor  Bureau  of  .Mass. 


258  ECONOMICS. 

to  supersede  or  modify  the  wages-system,  there  have 
been  many  others  whose  aim  is  to  supplement  wages, 
to  make  them  more  effective  in  securing  prosperity. 
Among  these,  Saving  and  Loan  Associations  have  been 
very  successful,  especially  in  some  parts  of  our  own 
country.  They  promote  frugality,  and  encourage  the 
workman  to  become  the  owner  of  his  own  home  ;  they 
provide  for  him  safe  and  profitable  investments. 

The  stock  of  these  associations  is  offered  in  moderate 
amounts.  It  is  paid  in  small  sums,  at  regular  intervals. 
The  stock  held  by  any  person  is  accepted  as  security 
for  a  loan  to  be  used  in  building  a  home.1 

This  method  of  aid  started  in  Philadelphia  in  1831. 
State  laws  were  passed  favorable  to  it,  and  limiting  it. 
Since  1860  it  has  extended  rapidly.  It  has  been  a 
powerful  means  in  giving  to  Philadelphia  its  distinctive 
character  as  a  city  of  homes.  These  associations  have 
been  managed  with  us  as  a  rule  wisely  and  honestly, 
and  have  acted  as  sound  incentives  in  a  very  desirable 
direction.  They  are  open  —  as  a  recent  failure  of  a 
building  society  in  London  with  a  heavy  deficit  shows  — 
to  that  most  inexcusable  fault,  careless  and  fraudulent 
administration. 

The  various  partial  solutions  of  the  perplexities  of 
distribution  develop,  each  of  them,  some  special  affinity 
with  some  one  form  of  society,  or  some  one  type  of 
national  character.  They  thus  indicate  the  close  affilia- 
tion of  commerce  and  moral  forces.  Trades-unions  have 
been  especially  prosperous  in  England.  The  staid 
character  of  the  workmen,  their  vigorous  industrial 
training,  the  uniform  and  somewhat  severe  pressure  to 

1  "Co-operative  Saving  and  Loan  Associations,"  Seymour  Dexter. 


SA  V1NGS-BANKS.  259 

which  they  are  subjected,  and  the  terms  on  which  they 
stand  with  each  other  of  free  intercourse,  have  favored 
this  result.  For  much  the  same  reasons  co-operation 
has  spread  farther  and  been  more  successful  in  England 
than  elsewhere.  Profit-sharing  has  especially  thriven 
in  France,  and  has  met  with  only  fitful  success  else- 
where. It  turns  on  the  enthusiasm  of  the  manager, 
and  on  the  ease  with  which  he  unites  social  and  economic 
motives.  An  overbearing  commercial  temper  constantly 
falls  out  with  the  vexations  of  profit-sharing.  An 
impulsive,  sympathetic  character  makes  light  of  them. 
Saving  and  loan  associations  put  no  restraints  on 
business,  are  themselves  a  simple  extension  of  it,  and 
appeal  strongly  to  workmen  sufficiently  prosperous  to 
make  thrift  possible.  Hence  they  have  prospered  in 
this  country  side  by  side  with  methods  shaped  sub- 
missively to  the  eager  money-making  temper. 

Savings-banks  and  life  insurance  are  very  general 
means  of  aiding  the  poor  and  those  of  moderate  means. 
The  very  poor  can  hardly  avail  themselves  of  insurance, 
nor  are  they  inclined  to.  The  forecast  called  for  is  too 
great,  the  returns  are  too  remote,  and  the  immediate 
pressure  is  too  severe.  The  most  weighty  objection  to 
insurance  has  been  the  very  easy  entrance  it  gives  to 
dishonesty.  In  the  earlier  stages  of  the  business,  the 
receipts  are  greatly  in  excess  of  the  demands ;  the  wis- 
dom and  integrity  of  the  management  are  not  tested 
till  these  demands  begin  to  accrue  in  full  force. 

Savings-banks  address  themselves  pre-eminently  to  the 
poor.  They  are  open  to  two  difficulties,  insecurity  and 
light  returns.  The  first  is  much  the  more  effective 
deterrent.     The  service  rendered  by  them  to  the  work- 


260  ECONOMICS. 

ing  classes  in  stimulating  frugality,  and  to  the  com- 
munity in  general  in  gathering  up  and  making  available 
large  amounts  of  capital,  has  been  very  great,  so  great 
that  the  prosperity  of  these  banks  is  a  safe  test  of  the 
prosperity  of  the  people.  A  perfectly  open  and  a  per- 
fectly safe  deposit  in  any  community  for  the  smallest 
savings  of  its  citizens,  a  method  of  deposit  that  gives 
the  same  facility  in  withdrawing  as  in  receiving  funds, 
is  one  of  the  simplest,  most  universal,  and  most  be- 
neficent of  economic  forces.  There  are  few  crimes, 
judged  by  their  immediate  social  results,  worthy  of 
more  condemnation  than  carelessness  or  recklessness  in 
handling  these  trust  funds.  The  poor,  in  the  degree 
of  their  poverty,  are  disinclined  to  save,  and  are  dis- 
trustful of  the  terms  offered  them.  Any  action  which 
enhances  this  evil  is  deadly  in  its  effects.  The  failure 
of  the  Freedman's  Bank  scattered  like  a  cyclone  the 
beginnings  of  better  things  in  the  class  for  whom  it  was 
designed.  It  is  these  considerations  of  complete  uni- 
versality and  absolute  security  which  justify  the  Post- 
Office  Banks  of  England.  Deposits  increased  in  them, 
in  the  ten  years  between  1874-84,  from  £23,157,469 
to  £44,773,773  ;  and  depositors  from  1,668,773  to  3,333,- 
675. 1  It  is  not  easy  to  estimate  the  vast  amount  of 
additional  productive  and  social  strength  which  such 
a  fact  represents. 

Other  governments  have  taken  up  the  far  more  dim- 
cult  task  of  lending  money,  and  of  insuring  workmen 
against  sickness  and  age.  The  Belgium  government 
lends  funds  on  adequate  security  at  2.5  and  3  per  cent. 
In  Germany  the  government  insures  the  workmen  against 

i  "  Social  Studies,"  R.  Heber  Newtou,  p.  42. 


GAINS   OF    WORKMEN.  2(31 

accident,  sickness,  and  age.  In  the  insurance  against 
sickness,  the  employer  pays  one-third  and  advances  two- 
thirds  ;  in  the  insurance  against  accident  the  employer 
pays  all ;  and  in  that  against  age,  the  employer  pays 
one-third,  the  employee  one-third,  and  the  state  one- 
third.1  These  forms  of  insurance  so  reduce  the  inde- 
pendence of  the  workmen,  and  set  up,  in  an  obscure 
way,  so  many  tendencies  of  an  unfortunate  character, 
as  greatly  to  reduce  the  good  they  accomplish.  The  em- 
ployer is  pretty  certain,  sooner  or  later,  to  right  himself 
under  any  burden  laid  upon  him,  while  the  loss  of  per- 
sonal power  and  responsibility  is  sure  to  tell  against 
the  workmen. 

§  14.  The  aggregate  results  of  these  various  correc- 
tions and  aids  have  been  very  considerable.  The  possi- 
bilities of  an  improved  distribution  have  been  tested  by 
them  in  various  directions.  We  are  to  remember  that  un- 
professional services,  in  their  entire  circle,  will  be  chiefly 
determined  in  their  price  by  the  returns  of  labor  in  the 
leading  lines  of  production.  When  labor  is  prosperous, 
and  1  (ringing  prosperity  to  all  in  its  primary  forms,  the 
products  thus  secured  are  present  to  enlarge  the  demand 
and  increase  the  reward  of  service  everywhere.  Yet  a 
direct  result  of  these  efforts  for  better  distribution  has 
been  higher  wages.  This  increase  has  not  been  wholly 
the  inevitable  consequence  of  enlarged  production.  This 
enlargement  seemed  ready,  at  the  outset,  to  accept  fresh 
hardships  and  social  deterioration  on  the  part  of  the 
workmen.  The  tide  was' turned  in  the  opposite  direc- 
tion, and  the  possible  successes  contained  in  the  circum- 
stances won  by  a  conscious  and  determined  effort. 

IF.  W.  Taussig,  Forum,  October,  1889. 


262  ECONOMICS. 

Wages  in  England  have  increased  in  fifty  years  from 
50  to  100,  and  in  New  England  from  40  to  100  per 
cent.1  The  report  of  Mr.  Aldrich,  of  the  Senate  Com- 
mittee on  Finance,  Wages,  and  Prices,  as  summarized 
by  C.  D.  Wright,  gives  the  increase  of  wages  in  the 
United  States  since  1840  as  something  over  100  per 
cent.  Representing  the  wages  of  1860  ■ —  chosen  as  a 
quiet  period  just  preceding  the  great  war — as  100, 
those  of  1840  were  82.5,  and  those  of  1891  were  168.6.2 

There  has  been  on  the  Continent  a  growth,  though 
not  an  equal  growth,  of  wages.  In  1867,  in  Milan,  the 
cotton-spinner  received  lfr.  40c.  ;  in  1889  he  received 
lfr.  90c.  The  wool-spinner  received  at  the  same  dates 
2fr.  75c ;  and  5fr.  50c.  In  Vicenza,  in  1867,  he  received 
3fr.  19c,  and  in  1889,  4fr.  35c.3  If  there  has  been 
any  appreciation  in  the  price  of  gold  in  the  last  forty 
years,  it  not  only  does  not  directly  appear  in  wages; 
it  has  served,  if  present,  to  enhance  their  purchasing 
power. 

The  purchasing  power  of  wages,  in  the  meantime,  has 
greatly  increased.  This  has  arisen  from  the  cheapening 
of  products  by  the  constant  extension  and  improvement 
of  machinery,  from  the  diminished  proportion  of  labor 
represented  in  products,  and  from  the  constant  increase 
of  skill  in  the  laborer.  In  1875,  in  Massachusetts,  in 
2,000  establishments  labor  constituted  24.68  per  cent  of 
the  entire  cost ;  in  1880,  it  had  fallen  to  20.23  per  cent. 
In  1840,  labor  is  given  by  David  A.  Wells  as  25  per 
cent ;   in  1880,  as  17.5  per  cent.     At  the  present  time 

1  Wells's  "Recent  Economic  Changes,"  p.  356. 

2  Forum,  vol.  xvi.  p.  22fj. 

3  Spectator,  April  24,  1891. 


GAINS   OF   WOBKMEN.  263 

28s.  bd.  have  in  England  the  purchasing  power  of 
34s.  Old  in  1839.1 

According  to  the  report  of  the  committee  just  now  re- 
ferred to,  "  if  Ave  let  100  represent  the  prices  of  223  com- 
modities entering  into  consumption  on  the  basis  of  the 
importance  of  each  article  in  1860,"  the  corresponding 
representative  number  in  1891  would  be  94. 1.2  Not- 
withstanding the  violent  fluctuation  of  prices  in  the 
United  States  in  consequence  of  the  disturbing  effects 
of  war,  of  an  unsound  currency,  and  of  legislation  dis- 
criminating between  products,  there  has  been  an  increase 
of  purchasing  power  in  wages.  These  gains  have  been 
greater  and  firmer  in  a  country  like  England,  in  which 
the  natural  progress  of  events  has  been  less  interrupted.3 

These  two  gains,  increased  wages  and  increased  pur- 
chasing power,  express  themselves  in  a  third  gain,  im- 
proved diet.  In  England,  in  1840,  the  consumption  of 
sugar  per  capita  was  15.20  lbs. ;  in  1886,  it  was  47.21. 
In  1841,  the  consumption  of  tea  was  19^  oz.  ;  in  1891, 
it  was  87  oz.4  This  improvement  in  the  external  condi- 
tions of  life  is  expressed  in  the  United  States  more  in 
clothing,  homes,  comforts,  than  in  food.  Food  has  been 
so  abundant  that  comparatively  little  restraint,  in  this 
particular,  has  come  to  the  great  body  of  the  people. 
This  restriction  is  a  recent  difficulty  connected  with 
the  growth  of  a  dependent  class,  largely  the  result  of 
an  immigration  that  has  constantly  altered  for  the 
worse  the  terms  of  production. 

1  Wells's  "Recent  Economic  Changes,"  ]>.  355. 

2  Ibid,  p.  227. 

3  "Essays  on  Finance,"  2d  series,  "The  Progress  of  the  Working 
Class,"  Robert  Giffen. 

i  Spectator,  April  Hi,  1893. 


264  ECONOMICS. 

An  increased  use  of  meat  marks  more  distinctly  than 
any  other  change  in  diet  the  improved  condition  of 
workmen.  Mr.  Davies,  an  American  contractor,  laying 
pavements  in  London  and  elsewhere,  raised  the  pay  of 
his  employees  from  80c.  to  $1,  on  condition  of  the  use  of 
more  meat.  Not  only  is  the  diet  of  the  best  paid  work- 
men the  best ;  the  better  diet  correspondingly  increases 
the  efficiency  of  the  laborer.  Principles  we  readily 
recognize  in  the  management  of  animals,  we  find  more 
difficulty  in  accepting  in  connection  with  men. 

In  England  the  death-rate  was,  in  1660,  80  in  1,000  ; 
in  1871  it  was  21.43.1  The  sanitary  condition  of  each 
city  now  reveals  itself  very  distinctly  in  the  death-rate. 
London  has  a  lower  rate  than  Boston,  New  York,  Brook- 
lyn, or  Chicago.  "We  are  still  under  the  inertia  incident 
to  passing  from  easier  conditions  of  life  to  more  severe 
ones.  "We  do  not  become  aware  at  once  of  the  change, 
nor  do  we  at  once  arouse  ourselves  to  meet  it. 

A  further  gain,  greatly  enhancing  the  value  of  the 
gains  already  mentioned,  and  preparing  the  way  for 
intellectual  and  spiritual  improvement,  has  been  the  re- 
duction in  the  hours  of  labor.  This  reduction  in  Eng- 
land and  in  the  United  States  is  steadily  approaching 
eight  hours.  Experience  seems  to  show  that  for  most 
occupations  these  hours  indicate  the  point  of  greatest 
efficiency.  This  improvement  has  certainly  not  been 
the  result  of  simply  economic  forces.  A  persevering 
and  arduous  effort  has  been  made  in  this  direction.  To 
the  surprise  of  almost  all,  it  has  been  discovered  that 
economic  interests  are  not  in  conflict  with  it. 

The  steady  growth  of  resources  in  workmen  finds  an 

1  "  Subjects  of  Social  Welfare,"  p.  4. 


SWEATING   PROCESS.  265 

expression  in  the  deposits  of  savings-banks.  Mr.  Giffen 
puts  the  annual  savings  of  the  working-classes  in  Eng- 
land at  £  6,200,00c.1 

Not  every  portion  of  the  working-classes  has  kept 
pace  with  the  general  improvement.  Some  have  come 
under  a  sweating  process  which  has  forced  them  down 
to  the  lowest  wages  consistent  with  life.  The  most 
specific  form  of  this  evil  arises  under  a  contractor  who 
gathers  into  his  service,  in  any  employment,  the  most 
dependent  workmen,  and  gradually  makes  this  depend- 
ence complete.  All  branches  of  needlework  have  been 
peculiarly  open  to  sweating.  A  shrewd  operator,  for 
example,  collects  under  his  direction  tailors  who  have 
been  irregularly  employed,  and  who  have  lost  a  secure 
standing  in  the  trade.  He  pays  them  low  wages,  and 
exacts  the  largest  service.  He  is  thus  able  to  undersell 
those  who  are  carrying  on  the  business  under  a  more 
generous  method.  The  fall  of  prices  increases  the  de- 
pendent class,  and  makes  those  in  the  employment  of 
the  sweater  more  absolutely  subject  to  him.  This  pro- 
cess, once  initiated,  repeats  itself  under  competition 
with  ever  worse  results.  All  are  pushing  wages  down 
as  a  means  of  self-defence.  The  burden  of  the  posi- 
tion is  assiduously  transferred  from  the  dealer  to  the 
wage-earner,  till  nothing  is  left  him  but  the  most 
extreme  toil  for  the  most  inadequate  returns.  The 
sweating  process  is  a  complete  break-down  of  purely 
economic  forces  in  connection  with  the  public  welfare. 
It  is  the  expression  of  a  downward  tendency  which 
they  are  liable  to  take  on.  An  intermediate  contractor 
or  an  inferior  shop  are  not  necessary  parts  of  the  move- 

1  Spectator,  Jan.  28,  1893. 


266  ECONOMICS. 

ment.  The  largest  and  the  most  respectable  establish- 
ments may  let  ont  their  work  on  the  hardest  terms, 
with  severe  fines  for  any  alleged  neglect.  When  the 
market  for  labor  is  assuming  this  phase,  the  single 
laborer  cannot  correct  it,  nor  will  it  correct  itself. 
The  underbidding  of  workmen  for  employment  operates 
more  powerfully  on  wages  than  does  the  increased  demand 
for  products  at  these  reduced  prices.  In  Xew  York  City 
shirts  have  been  made  for  thirty-five  cents  per  dozen. 
Women  have  worked  from  fourteen  to  sixteen  hours  a 
day,  and  received  from  three  to  four  dollars  per  week.1 

This  system,  once  developed,  is  very  difficult  of  cor- 
rection within  itself.  The  employer  is  as  much  subject 
to  it  as  the  employee.  The  employer  can  continue  his 
business  only  by  conforming  to  existing  conditions,  and 
his  continuance  is  as  much  a  necessity  for  the  workman 
as  for  himself.  The  least  scrupulous  are  assigning  ever 
harder  and  harder  conditions  to  all  the  rest ;  and  the 
public  at  large,  partly  in  ignorance  and  partly  in  con- 
cession to  what  they  quietly  accept  as  the  inevitable 
under  economic  principles,  profit  by  the  wrong,  and 
increase  the  superincumbent  weight  that  is  crushing 
out  the  life  of  the  laborer.  This  evil  develops  itself 
especially  in  connection  with  the  work  of  women.  The 
change  of  occupation,  the  corrective  force  of  Political 
Economy,  is  not  possible  to  them.  Generally,  as  labor 
becomes  depressed,  it  loses  that  mobility  on  which  Eco- 
nomics relies  as  offering  a  remedy. 

The  force  of  the  labor-movement  is  at  length  slowly 
reaching  this  most  depressed  class.  They  are  being 
organized   into  unions,   and   so   put   into   a  position  to 

i  Henry  George,  "  Social  Problems,"  p.  I'll. 


SWEATING  PROCESS.  267 

resist  exaction.  The  Russian  Jews  engaged  in  cloak- 
making  in  New  York  have  struck  successfully  for  higher 
wages.1  There  has  also  been  an  effort  to  reach  this 
evil  by  law.  A  mark  indicating  the  place  of  manufac- 
ture has  been  required,  thus  disclosing  to  the  public 
the  goods  which  are  the  result  of  a  sweating  process. 
The  making  of  clothes  in  private  rooms  renders  public 
inspection  and  the  imposition  of  suitable  conditions  dif- 
ficult. The  intensity  of  competition  has  so  reversed 
all  natural  relations  that  the  most  undesirable  forms  of 
labor  now  hide  themselves  away  in  what  we  are  wont 
to  designate  as  the  home.  Any  general  and  continuous 
improvement  in  the  working-classes  calls  for  the  redress 
of  this  evil.  The  forgotten  wrongs  of  the  poorest  la- 
borer become,  after  a  time,  the  millstone  about  the  neck, 
drowning  all  in  the  sea  of  poverty. 

The  most  satisfactory  and  certain  test  of  improvement 
in  the  condition  of  the  working-classes  is  a  decrease  in 
pauperism  and  crime.  The  increase  of  pauperism  and 
crime  in  the  United  States  shows  the  passing  away  of 
those  exceptional  terms  of  advantage  which  fell  to  us 
in  the  sudden  occcupation  of  a  fresh  continent.  They 
are  also  the  result,  in  part,  of  an  extreme  irregularity 
of  distribution  incident  to  a  great  diversity. in  personal 
powers.  The  two,  poverty  and  bad  distribution,  have 
sustained  each  other.  If  these  are  other  than  tran- 
sient evils,  shortly  to  be  corrected,  they  would  suffice 
to  extinguish  the  hopes  of  the  future.  Social  improve- 
ment cannot  be  maintained  in  the  presence  of  growing 
pauperism  and  crime. 

1  Ida  M.  Van  Etten,  Forum,  April,  1893,  "Hull  House  Maps  and 
Papers." 


268  ECONOMICS. 

There  has  been  in  England,  in  the  period  covered  by 
the  labor-movement,  a  decided  decrease  of  pauperism 
and  crime.  In  the  British  Isles,  in  1840,  there  was  one 
convict  in  500 ;  in  1885  there  was  one  in  4,100.  The 
general  prosperity  and  exceptional  enterprise  in  the 
United  States  —  the  result  of  its  exceptionally  favor- 
able resources  —  have  made  us  neglectful  of  social 
problems,  and  have  covered  up  from  us  the  conse- 
quences of  our  own  carelessness.  The  evils  of  our 
methods  have  developed  themselves  the  more  rapidly 
because  a  large  emigration  has  thrown  upon  us  many 
already  debauched  by  a  bad  civilization.  The  indica- 
tions of  the  future  are  with  us  conflicting.  Looking 
in  one  direction,  we  can  find  many  grounds  of  encour- 
agement ;  looking  in  another  direction,  we  see  occasion  of 
alarm.  It  has  been  estimated  that,  in  1889,  2,000,000 
men  in  the  United  States  received  for  their  year's  labor, 
on  the  average,  $200.  A  little  pressure  suffices  to  throw 
a  million  men  out  of  employment.  No  country  calls  for 
more  immediate  thoughtful  attention  to  social  problems ; 
nor  is  the  want  of  such  attention  likely  to  be  followed 
in  any  country  by  a  more  rapid  accumulation  of  mischief. 

§  15.  That  the  division  between  wages  and  profits 
has  not  been  a  desirable  one  is  sufficiently  shown  by 
the  great  and  sudden  fortunes  which  have  been  secured 
—  fortunes  which  do  not,  as  incentives  to  action, 
quicken  the  ordinary  processes  of  production,  but  pro- 
voke a  speculative,  reckless,  and  exacting  temper.  They 
beget  fever-heat,  not  normal  warmth. 

In  the  last  decade  the  total  wealth  of  the  United 
Kingdom  was  £10,000,000,000;  of  the  United  States, 
£8,000,000,000;  and  of  France  £7,200,000,000.     Till  a 


BAD    DISTRIBUTION.  269 

recent  period,  this  wealth  was  distributed  more  equally 
in  the  United  States  than  in  France,  and  much  more 
equally  than  in  England.  Now  a  startling  inequality 
appears  in  the  apportionment  of  the  fruits  of  our  com- 
mon labor.  Many  blind  themselves  to  the  ultimate 
social  results  of  this  inequality,  and  accept  it  cheerfully 
as  the  fruit  of  economic  law.  They  seem  to  forget  that 
a  movement  of  this  kind  accumulates  momentum  at  a 
fearful  rate;  that  great  wealth  swallows  up  the  oppor- 
tunities of  an  entire   community. 

Seventy  estates  in  the  United  States  are  estimated  as 
averaging  $35,000,000.'  In  Detroit  2  per  cent  of  the 
citizens  are  said  to  own  half  the  city.  Twenty-five 
thousand  persons  are  thought  to  possess  more  than  half 
the  wealth  of  the  United  States ;  or  1  per  cent  of  the 
people  own  50  per  cent  of  the  wealth.2  The  average 
income  of  the  richest  100  men  in  England  is  $450,000 ; 
in  the  United  States  it  is  $1,200,000.  While  inequali- 
ties have  increased  with  us  in  this  astonishing  way,  in 
England,  in  the  same  period,  the  balance  of  results  has 
been  in  the  opposite  direction.  The  income  tax  shows 
a  relative  increase  of  moderate  incomes.  The  number 
of  incomes  ranging  between  £150  and  £1,000  gained, 
in  the  ten  years  commencing  with  1877,  19.26  per  cent.  ; 
while  incomes  in  excess  of  £1,000  decreased  2.4  per 
cent.3  A  tendency  akin  to  our  own  shows  itself  only  in 
the  very  rich,  due  to  the  immense  increase  of  power 
which  wealth,  in  its  larger  amounts,  bestows.     Incomes 

1  Tli.  O.  Shearman,  Forum,  vol.  x.  p.  5-1(5. 

2  F orum,  Th.  <;.  Shearman,  vol.  viii.  p.  40 ;  F.  A.  "Walker,  vol.  x. 
\>.  243. 

3  "Recent  Economic  Changes,"  p.  .'S58. 


270  ECONOMICS. 

of   £50,000   and  upward  passed,  iu  the  years  between 
1843  and  1880,  from  8  to  68. 

These  facts  show  plainly  that  distribution,  as  going 
on  between  labor  and  management,  has  not  robbed  the 
manager  of  his  margin  and  of  his  motives.  It  should 
be  remembered  that  these  great  and  socially  disastrous 
inequalities  in  distribution  in  the  United  States  have 
not  arisen  under  normal  gains  badly  apportioned.  Few 
of  these  great  fortunes  have  been  achieved  under  the 
usual  operation  of  productive  forces.  They  have  been 
secured  by  a  free  use  of  that  civil  power  which  attends 
on  wealth  in  an  appropriation  of  common  natural  re- 
sources, as  public  lands,  mines,  forests  ;  by  legislation 
favoring  given  forms  of  production,  as  the  manufacture 
of  iron ;  by  a  dishonest  use  of  great  franchises,  as  in 
railways ;  by  monopolies  achieved  through  patents,  as 
in  the  case  of  the  telephone ;  by  monopolies  achieved 
through  franchises,  as  street  railways ;  by  monopolies 
arising  from  a  concentration  of  power,  as  in  the  Stan- 
dard Oil  Company  ;  and  by  violent  forms  of  speculation 
which  have  made  great  markets,  as  the  meat  market  of 
Chicago,  the  instruments  of  gamblers.  The  New  York 
Produce  Exchange  sold,  Aug.  17,  1891,  21,000,000 
bushels  of  wheat,  while  the  entire  amount  in  the  United 
States  was  19,556,682. l  Henry  S.  Ives  in  eight  years 
passed  from  a  stool  at  $1  per  day  to  a  failure  for 
$20,000,000. 

This  iniquitous  distribution  in  the  United  States  is 
due,  very  largely,  to  unequal  legislation  tolerated  by 
public  sentiment ;  or  to  the  want  of  legislation  protect- 
ing primary  rights.     The   correction   is   civic,  quite  as 

i  W.  B.  Curtis,  For  am,  October,  1891. 


PRINCIPLES    OF  DISTRIBUTION.  271 

much  as  economic.  The  people  have  lost  their  own,  not 
so  much  by  badly  applied  economic  laws,  as  by  a  social 
and  civic  temper  neglectful  of  the  claims  of  man  upon 
man.  Ill-ordered  taxation  has  transferred  wealth  in 
large  amounts  from  the  poor  to  the  rich.  These  points 
will  receive  further  consideration  under  Civics.  The 
labor-movement,  in  its  efforts  to  correct  distribution,  has 
shown  most  desirable  results,  but  results  that  leave 
much  to  be  done. 

§  16.  The  long,  heroic  struggle  involved  in  this  move- 
ment has  been  replete  with  social  instruction.  Social 
contentment,  social  construction,  depend,  in  a  high  de- 
gree, on  just  distribution.  Just  distribution  gives  a 
universal,  uniform,  and  prosperous  motion  to  all  the 
wheels  of  production,  and  sows  its  products  with  an 
even  and  generous  hand,  as  the  seed  of  later  harvests. 

It  is  as  nearly  self-evident  as  possible  that  every  man 
is  entitled  to  himself,  to  his  own  powers.  No  other 
property  can  be  plainer  than  this.  This  right  leaves 
untouched  the  right  of  every  man,  working  with  or 
under  a  man  of  unusual  endowments,  to  make  what 
terms  he  can  with  him.  A  man's  right  to  his  own 
powers  does  not  mean  a  right  to  unresisted  appropria- 
tion of  all  the  gains  that  may  accrue  in  connection  with 
those  powers.  Profits  turn  on  the  concurrent  labors  of 
many,  and  there  is  no  absolute  portion  which  falls  to 
one  or  another  without  consultation  and  agreement. 
It  is  a  part  of  the  power  of  each  to  make  the  most 
he  can,  then  and  there,  in  the  use  of  his  powers.  The 
principle,  that  each  man  is  entitled  to  the  producl  of 
a  legitimate  use  of  his  own  powers,  while  it  precludes 
an  etpaal  division  of  the  returns  of  labor,  allows  each 


272  ECONOMICS. 

laborer  to  part  with,  his  services  on  the  best  terras  he 
can  command.  In  so  doing,  he  is  simply  putting  his 
powers  to  their  highest  use. 

While  just  distribution  calls  out  to  the  full  the  claims 
of  all,  it  does  not  leave  them  to  be  wrangled  over  with 
no  principle  of  reconciliation.     It  is  for  the  advantage 
of  every  man  that  the  powers  of  every  other  man  shall 
find  full  expression  in  production.     His  own  gains  turn 
on  it.     There  is  thus  a  double  set  of  interests  involved 
in  distribution.     Each  man  is  first  anxious  that  his  own 
share  shall    not  be    unduly  reduced,  and    then  he   has 
occasion  to  be  anxious  that  the  share  of  no  other  man 
shall  be  unjustly  diminished.     There  is  a  point  at  which 
all  claims  are  reconciled,  a  point  at  which  a  maximum 
advantage  —  all  persons  and  long  periods  being  consid- 
ered —  is    attained.     One's  portion  and    the   portion  of 
others  may  stand  in  such  relation  to  each  other,  that  all 
are  stimulated  to  put  forth  their  best  efforts.     The  need 
of  giving  full  play  to  the  skill  of  the  manager,  the  need 
of  calling  forth  effort  and  hope  in  workmen,  are  correla- 
•  tive   parts   of  one  result,  the  largest  production.     The 
largest  production  is  the  determining  idea  in  Economics. 
These  two  things  are  not  merely  concurrent ;  they  are  in 
long  periods  inseparable  from  each  other.     Any  excess 
of  advantage,  on  'this  side  or  on  that,  first  weakens  the 
opposite    interest,  and    then,   in    reaction,   weakens  the 
very   interest   which    seems    to    have    won    the    battle. 
Strenuous  and  sustained  effort  is  as  good  for   the  one 
party  to  production  as  for  the  other,  and  can  only  be 
sustained    in    both    by    just    distribution.       Reasonable 
gains,   as  the  result  of  assiduous  effort,  is  the  law  of 
the  largest  production. 


PRINCIPLES   OF  DISTRIBUTION.        ■     273 

If  either  side  needs  to  be  handled  tenderly,  it  is  the 
weaker  side,  it  is  labor,  not  management.  Industrial 
incentives,  ambition,  energy,  the  pleasure  of  power ;  in- 
dustrial virtues,  forecast,  patience,  economy,  —  are  more 
constantly  present  with  managers  than  with  laborers. 
Managers  are  less  open  to  social  depression  than  work- 
men. 

That  distribution  is  at  once  economically  and  socially 
the  best  which  gives  the  widest  and  most  adequate  in- 
centives to  effort,  which  allows  the  freest  play  of  powers, 
suffering  no  man's  powers  to  override  the  powers  of 
others.  There  is  a  clear  tendency  toward  this  result 
in  the  present  form  of  distribution,  notwithstanding  its 
frequent  failure.  There  has  been  a  growth  of  wages  in 
the  presence  of  exorbitant  profits.  While  wages  have 
risen,  prices  have  fallen.  Workmen  have  not  gained 
ground  at  the  cost  of  their  fellow-citizens.  In  most 
departments  of  production  the  two  movements  have 
gone  on  together,  the  gain  of  workmen  by  increased 
wages,  the  gain  of  the  citizens  by  diminished  prices. 

So  far  as  economic  principles  are  concerned,  two 
things  are  plain.  The  labor-movement  has  in  no  way 
broken  with  them.  They  remain  much  the  same  truths 
they  have  been  thought  to  be.  The  method  of  distribu- 
tion which  gives  them  the  most  immediate  force,  the 
wages-system,  is"  still  the  rule.  On  the  other  hand,  it  is 
equally  clear  that  these  laws  are  not,  in  their  most  suc- 
cessful use,  automatic.  They  can,  in  various  ways,  be 
softened,  supplemented,  redirected,  so  as  to  reach  more 
certainly  and  rapidly  the  general  welfare.  Man's  intel- 
ligence finds  fall  play  both  under  them*  and  through 
them.     Economic  principles  are  pregnant    with  benefi- 


274  ECONOMICS. 

cent  possibilities,  but  wisdom  alone  brings  them  success- 
fully to  the  birth.  Prosperity  is  not  a  mechanical 
product,  but  a  rational  one.  Men's  very  diverse  powers, 
and  the  very  diverse  positions  which  these  powers  as- 
sume to  each  other  in  society,  will  not  long  respond  in 
the  delicate  correlations  of  production  unless  all  powers 
are  fed,  stimulated,  and  renewed  by  favorable  distribu- 
tion. The  industrial  soil  will  be  exhausted  unless  it  is 
constantly  fertilized  by  the  very  tillage  to  which  it  is 
subjected.  Production  calls  for  a  consumption  coexten- 
sive with  itself.  Consumption  properly  has  the  lead. 
Any  inability  anywhere  to  consume  means  inability  to 
produce.  These  two  abilities  must  touch  each  other, 
point  by  point,  and  balance  each  other  through  the 
entire  field.  The  rise  of  wages  must  mean  increased 
consumption ;  increased  consumption  must  mean  in- 
creased production ;  and  this,  the  sustentation  of  wages. 
The  workmen,  in  the  end,  control  industry,  because  they 
alone  give  consumption  the  breadth  and  volume  which 
make  production  universal  and  safe.  An  enclosed  sea 
becomes  a  Dead  Sea  with  vicious  characteristics.  The 
ocean  alone  maintains  its  salubrious  quality. 

Favorable  distribution,  and  the  growth  of  productive 
resources  under  it,  can  be  gained  in  no  sudden,  and  in  no 
single,  way.  They  involve  slow  steps  of  better  integra- 
tion, a  growth  in  the  capacity  of  individuals  and  in  their 
relations  to  one  another ;  they  turn  on  vital  processes, 
perfected  at  single  points,  and  resolving  themselves  into 
innumerable  particulars.  The  difficulties  and  the  reme- 
dies are  neither  wholly  economic,  nor  wholly  social,  nor 
wholly  moral ;  they  are  all  three,  blended  in  an  indus- 
trial, social,  and  moral  coalition.     The  methods  of  men, 


PRINCIPLES   OF  DISTRIBUTION.  27o 

the  temper  of  men,  the  thoughts  of  men,  pass  together 
and  pass  continuously  into  better  adjustments.  The 
lower  impulse  is  chiefly  significant  in  its  connection  with 
the  higher  impulse,  and  the  higher  impulse  discloses  at 
once  its  true  scope  by  shaping  the  lower  one  in  better 
uses.  Social  salvation  is  wrought  out,  individual  by 
individual,  class  by  class,  community  by  community, 
nation  by  nation,  all  operative  in  extension  of  the  same 
principles.  In  these  social  processes,  the  separation  and 
the  unity  of  our  lives  are  to  be  equally  emphasized, 
the  potency  of  great  principles  and  their  perpetual  sus- 
pension by  the  recalcitrant  will.  The  ultimate  good 
includes  alike  a  perfection  of  parts,  and  a  perfection 
of  combination. 


276  ECONOMICS. 


CHAPTER  VII. 
EXCHANGE. 

§  1.  The  social  difficulties  which  have  arisen  in  con- 
nection with  exchange  have  not  been  occasioned  by  a 
too  arbitrary  and  unintelligent  acceptance  of  economic 
laws,  but  by  great  ignorance  of  them  and  restlessness 
under  them.  The  wide  and  sweeping  disasters  which 
have  been  associated  with  exchange  have  been  the 
result  of  short-cuts  to  wealth.  The  doctrine  of  protec- 
tion, which  has  been  so  extensively  urged  in  limitation  of 
trade,  is  an  example.  Nations  have  not  trusted  them- 
selves to  that  free  and  universal  exchange  of  products 
which  is  the  foremost  process  and  principle  in  Economics. 

The  doctrine  of  protection  finds  limited  recognition 
under  the  laws  of  Political  Economy,  and  is  a  totally 
different  doctrine  from  that  which  goes  under  the  same 
name  as  a  national  policy.  It  is  possible  that  a  nation, 
selecting  certain  industries  suited  to  its  conditions,  and 
nourishing  them  into  strength,  might,  thereby,  hasten 
its  development.  Such  protection  is  simply  a  slight 
anticipation  of  natural  forces.  It  soon  passes  into  those 
universal  forms  of  wide  and  prosperous  production  ex- 
pressed in  free  trade.  It  is  not  a  refusal  to  plunge  into 
the  stream,  it  is  simply  getting  ready  to  plunge  in. 
Such  a  policy  is  a  very  delicate  and  a  very  limited  one, 
and  calls  for  a  discrimination  and  self-control  that  na- 
tions have  rarely  shown. 


PROTECTION.  277 

The  doctrine  of  protection  which  elicits  such  warm 
support  as  a  national  policy  bears  little  or  no  resem- 
blance to  the  slight  concession  from  which  it  has  sprung. 
This  concession  has  simply  been  a  screen  behind  which 
many  things  have  been  done  of  which  the  public  was 
not  aware.  Protection  once  entered  on,  every  producer 
endeavors  to  avail  himself  of  it ;  and  a  large  share  of 
enterprise  is  diverted  from  watching  over  and  improv- 
ing the  natural  conditions  of  production,  into  watching 
over  and  improving  the  artificial  ones  expressed  in 
the  discriminations  of  law.  Protection  ceases  to  be 
regarded  as  a  partial  and  transitional  state,  and  is 
accepted  as  a  permanent  and  universal  one.  In  this 
form,  it  bids  defiance  to  every  principle  of  Economics 
and  Civics  alike.  It  becomes  an  extended  and  unscrupu- 
lous struggle  of  different  interests  to  gain  an  advantage 
over  each  other.  Far  from  its  being  an  acceptance  of  a 
burden  for  a  brief  period  by  the  strong  in  behalf  of  the 
weak,  it  becomes  a  method  by  which  the  strong,  in  all 
secret  and  obscure  ways,  circumvent  and  weigh  down 
the  weak.  A  state  of  things  is  now  reached  in  which 
no  man  knows,  or  can  know,  what  the  natural  forces 
really  are.  It  is  alike  difficult  and  confusing  to  go 
backward  or  to  go  forward.  Industry  is  not  resting  on 
natural  law,  but  civil  law  ;  and  some  one  is  pinched  and 
shrieks  out  in  pain  at  every  move.  It  is  true,  made  true 
by  protection  itself,  that  many  forms  of  industry  will 
suffer  by  withdrawing  aid.  Artificial  conditions  surround 
every  kind  of  business,  conditions  so  artificial  that  we 
know  accurately  neither  the  good  nor  the  evil  which  is 
at  work  in  them;  we  are  only  aware  of  the  outcry 
against  reduction.     The  business  temper,  in  this  general 


278  ECONOMICS. 

« 

confusion  of  results,  becomes  naturally  and  inevitably  a 
determination  to  profit  to  the  utmost  by  legislation,  with 
little  or  no  attention  to  the  alleged  losses  of  others. 
Enterprise  is  misdirected,  inequalities  spring  up  not  at 
all  involved  in  natural  facts,  the  sense  of  justice  is 
utterly  confused,  and  the  public  mind  is  confounded 
by  a  perplexity  of  claims  and  counter-claims  beyond  all 
analysis. 

A  manufacturer  of  fine  silk  plush,  returning  from 
Washington,  remarked,  "I  have  got  it  fixed.  If  this 
duty  holds  six  years,  I  am  a  rich  man.  I  do  not  care 
after  that."  Such  a  bill  as  the  McKinley  bill  becomes  a 
gigantic  segregation  of  human  selfishness,  a  blind  prod- 
uct of  conflicting  interests,  whose  true  relation  no  man 
understands.  "What  Sociology  here  teaches  is  a  better 
recognition  of  the  laws  of  Economics  and  far  more  con- 
fidence in  them;  the  displacement  of  the  immediate 
gains  of  self-interest  by  the  permanent  gains  of  unre- 
strained activity. 

§  2.  The  laws  of  exchange  in  connection  with  which 
men  have  suffered  the  most  sweeping  disasters,  disasters 
which  have  brought  with  them  less  instruction  than  one 
would  have  thought  possible,  have  been  those  which 
define  a  sound  currency,  a  safe  and  righteous  medium 
of  exchange.  This  error  is  more  observable  as  connected 
with  a  defective  sense  of  justice.  The  principles  which 
govern  currency  are  not  so  obscure  in  theory,  or  difficult 
in  practice,  as  to  explain  the  general  and  constantly 
returning  obscurations  under  them.  We  have,  in  these 
disasters,  fresh  enforcement  of  the  truth,  that  all  laws 
which  enter  into  social  action  must  rest  ultimately  on 
moral  sentiment. 


CURRENCY.  279 

The  two  points  of  confusion  in  currency  have  been 
its  quality  and  its  quantity.  Nothing  would  seem  to 
be  simpler  than  the  assertion  that  the  standard  of  val- 
ues, like  other  standards,  should  be  unchangeable  ;  that 
none  of  us  should  expect  to  profit  by  any  increase  or 
dimunition  in  the  unit  of  values,  any  more  than  in 
the  standard  foot.  The  one  uniformity  we  accept,  the 
other  we  constantly  evade.  This  state  of  mind  is  not 
altogether  capricious  and  wrong.  The  conditions  are 
widely  different.  The  foot  measure  is  invariable,  the 
dollar  has  always  been  variable.  Men  have  given  over 
every  hope  they  may  have  had  of  profiting  by  a  longer 
and  shorter  yard  ;  they  are  still  constantly  losing  and 
gaining  by  fluctuating  standards  of  value.  We  have 
come  to  look  upon  these  standards  as  necessarily  uncer- 
tain, something  to  be  paltered  with  to  suit  the  circum- 
stances. Because  our  standard  is  not  perfect,  because 
its  want  of  perfection  works  some  unavoidable  injus- 
tice, we  have  lost  the  disposition  to  make  it  as  perfect 
as  possible.  Proximate  perfection  does  not  secure  the 
same  hold  upon  us  as  absolute  perfection. 

To  measure  values,  to  hold  them  as  nearly  firm  as 
possible,  are  the  primary  functions  of  currency.  Though 
it  may  perform  other  functions  without  performing  these, 
it  performs  them  in  a  transient  and  defective  way. 
Values  "may  pass  in  and  out  of  a  fluctuating  currency 
in  the  same  hour  or  the  same  day,  and  we  may  suffer 
no  inconvenience.  The  function  of  transfer  has  been 
discharged.  But  such  a  currency  loses  even  this  func- 
tion, if  any  long  period  is  under  consideration.  It 
yields  nothing  as  it  receives  it,  and  all  is  confusion  — 
not  merely  of  values,  but  of  social  incentives  and  social 


280  ECONOMICS. 

sentiments  as  well.  A  sound  social  temper  is  one  which 
seeks  to  perfect  the  standard  of  values,  not  one  which 
strives  to  reconcile  debtors  and  creditors,  adding  the 
fluctuations  of  the  present  to  those  of  the  past,  and 
preparing  the  way  at  each  stage  for  a  new  and  distinct 
set  of  losses.  Moral  soundness  and  financial  wisdom  are 
emphatically  one  and  the  same ;  and  all  that  is  fruitful, 
true,  and  just  finds  expression  in  a  good  currency. 

There  is  much  confusion  of  thought  as  to  the  medium 
of  exchange,  but  it  is  due  chiefly  to  the  immediate  con- 
flict of  personal  interests  with  the  public  welfare.  We 
touch  bottom  by  virtue  of  deeper  ethical  soundings. 
This  question  of  a  standard  of  measurements  at  a  point 
on  which  the  practical  value  of  so  many  other  measure- 
ments turns,  has  been  put  to  us  in  a  new  form  by  the 
extreme  fluctuations  of  silver.  The  two  metals,  gold 
and  silver,  have  parted  company  to  such  a  degree  as  to 
render  it  improbable  that  they  can  ever  be  yoked  to- 
gether again.  The  bimetalist  holds  that  if  a  general  con- 
sensus of  commercial  nations  could  be  secured  for  the 
use  of  both  metals  at  a  favorable  ratio,  the  demand  for 
them  in  currency  would  be  so  extensive  and  firm  as  to 
overrule  the  minor  fluctuations  of  supply ;  that,  as  each 
would  be  fully  available  for  the  same  service  in  currency, 
they  would  at  once  replace  each  other  if  any  disparity 
of  value  arose  between  them,  and  so  immediately  correct 
it.  This  view  has,  in  a  high  degree,  the  defects  which 
beset  economic  theories.  It  supposes  the  agents  involved 
in  it  to  act  with  the  quickness  and  certainty  of  mechani- 
cal forces.  It  is  also  conditioned,  for  its  initiation,  on  a 
forecast  and  concurrence  which  it  is  impossible  to  secure. 
That  the  corrective  forces   relied   on   are  present  in  a 


CURRENCY.  281 

bimetallic  currency,  and  would  tend  to  operate  in  the 
manner  specified,  would  seem  undeniable  ;  but  whether 
they  would  show  the  energy  necessary  to  correct  the 
fluctuation  occasioned  by  irregular  production  is  a  ques- 
tion to  be  determined  by  experience  only.  This  uncer- 
tainty is  much  enhanced  by  the  fact  that  the  maintenance 
of  the  price  of  silver  would  increase  a  production  already 
too  great,  and  so  bring  on  at  once,  in  its  full  force,  the 
conflict  between  demand  and  supply. 

The  conditions  which  govern  the  supply  of  gold  and 
silver  have  no  connection  with  any  relation  which  may 
be  assigned  them  in  a  currency  ;  and  it  is  always  possible, 
therefore,  that  these  natural  forces  should  prove  too 
strong  for  the  restraints  we  are  able  to  put  upon  them. 
Events  quite  beyond  the  control  of  any  theory  have 
pushed  forward  gold  as  the  most  adequate  standard  of 
values.  Nor  would  this  result,  if  it  were  cheerfully 
accepted,  and  the  ingenuity  of  all  were  directed  to  the 
devising  of  safeguards,  be  the  occasion  of  alarm  that  it 
now  is.  Existing  apprehensions  are  not  so  much  the 
results  of  present  evils,  as  the  disappointment  of  hopes 
that  have  sprung  up  with  a  fluctuating  medium,  lending 
itself  to  speculative  methods. 

Tt  is  not  certain  that  gold  has  appreciated.  If  we  set 
aside  prices  that  have  fallen  under  the  effect  of  the  in- 
troduction of  machinery,  the  prices  that  remain  do  not 
indicate  a  change  in  the  value  of  gold.  The  commod- 
ity which  is  much  the  greatest  in  amount,  and  whose 
purchasing  power  is  of  chief  moment  to  society,  to 
wit,  labor,  has  steadily  advanced  in  price.  This  fact  is 
of  interest,  not  simply  as  bearing  on  the  appreciation  of 
gold,  but  as  indicating  that  that  appreciation,  even  if  it 


282  ECONOMICS. 

has  taken  place,  has  in  no  way  interfered  with  a  chief 
interest  of  society.  The  workman,  his  own  wages  on 
the  increase,  is  ready  to  avail  himself  of  the  fall  of  prices 
in  other  directions.  But  if  services  constitute  something 
like  one-half  the  subjects  of  exchange,  if  they  have  in- 
creased in  value,  if  to  this  increase  is  to  be  added  the 
enhanced  value  of  many  other  products,  like  furs,  ivory, 
woods,  lumber,  fuel,  and  many  forms  of  rent,  governed 
by  scarcity,  it  is  not  easy  to  affirm  that  gold  has  de- 
parted from  the  relative  position  it  has  heretofore  held. 

As  a  matter  of  fact,  a  sound  currency,  resting  on  a 
gold  basis,  has  made  London  the  financial  centre  of  the 
world.  No  appreciation  of  gold  has  interfered  with  this 
result.  That  is  to  say,  the  approximate  stability  of 
values  in  London  has  easily  overruled,  as  a  commercial 
force,  all  other  considerations.  It  has  shown  itself  the 
most  potent  of  them. 

The  metallic  basis  of  any  currency  is  capable,  in  use, 
of  such  indefinite  multiplication  of  power  by  bank  ac- 
counts, bills  of  credit,  checks,  drafts,  subsidiary  coin,  — 
devices  which  turn  in  their  extent  on  the  good  faith  and 
security  which  belong  to  a  firm  standard  —  as  to  remand 
it  almost  exclusively  to  the  single  service  of  defining 
values.  The  transfer  of  values  falls  almost  wholly  to 
its  accessories.  If  there  is  strength  at  the  centre,  the 
revolution  at  the  circumference  will  show  great  resources 
within  itself.  If  the  possibility  of  conversion  is  cer- 
tainly present,  actual  conversion  will  take  place  but 
rarely.  If  the  moral  and  economic  forces  of  any  com- 
munity are  in  harmony,  the  economic  forces  will  develop 
tremendous  resources.  The  fulcrum  of  leverage  is  a  firm 
Standard  of  values.     In  mastering  the  essential  element 


CURRENCY.  283 

of  integrity,  we  shall  have  mastered  all  its  concomi- 
tant methods  of  expression.  One  may  say  that  the  eco- 
nomic centre  and  the  moral  centre  in  exchange  coalesce 
in  a  firm  standard  of  values.  Capital  is  never  so  abun- 
dant as  when  securities  are  good  ;  securities  are  never 
good  except  in  connection  with  a  firm  expression  of 
values.  No  policy  which  neglects  the  primary  consider- 
ation can  cover  its  failure  by  adroitness  in  secondary 
things.  Distrust  will  ruin  all  its  measures.  The  chief 
social  truth  which  exchange  teaches  us  is  the  startling 
coincidence  of  all  interests  in  honesty  —  the  speedy  dis- 
aster which  is  sure  to  follow  in  all  directions  any  loss  of 
a  standard  of  values.  Exchange  rests  on  that  integrity 
which  is  the  heart  of  all  life.  The  inequalities  of  dis- 
tribution are  far  greater,  far  more  distressful,  in  con- 
nection with  a  fluctuating  than  with  a  fixed  medium  of 
exchange.  The  unreasonable  growth  of  private  fortunes 
with  us  was  much  accelerated  by  the  war  and  the  hide- 
and-seek  of  an  unsound  currency. 

§  3.  The  second  consideration  in  a  favorable  medium 
of  exchange  is  quantity.  The  two,  quality  and  quantity, 
cannot  be  separated  from  each  other.  Quantity  goes  far 
to  determine  quality,  and  quality  is  a  chief  regulating 
force  in  quantity.  The  notion  of  a  creation  of  values 
without  labor  has  had  great  fascination  for  men.  It  has 
been  an  economic  millennium  which  they  have  been  for- 
ever promising  themselves.  The  bill  of  credit  has  the 
purchasing  power  of  a  corresponding  amount  of  gold,  and 
this  sensuous  fact  expresses  for  many  the  entire  fact. 
This  illusion  is  the  more  complete,  because  the  bill  at 
once  greatly  extends  and  improves  the  service  of  gold. 
The  law  that  labor  is  the  universal  condition  of  produc* 


284  ECONOMICS. 

tion  seems  to  be  partially  set  aside,  and  the  visionary 
mind  seizes  with  avidity  upon  the  suggestion.  To  break 
with  the  universe  over  some  scheme  of  perpetual  motion 
is  very  fascinating. 

All  expansions  of  currency  are  forms  of  credit  rest- 
ing back  on  financial  strength  and  moral  integrity. 
They  no  more  create  values  than  they  create  goods. 
The  number  and  form  of  cars  are  determined  in  refer- 
ence to  the  amount  of  traffic,  and  have  no  value  aside 
from  this  service.  The  number  and  form  of  loans  de- 
pend on  the  activity  of  trade,  and  are  wholly  defined  in 
their  usefulness  by  the  interchange  they  promote.  Bills 
of  credit  have,  as  means  of  transfer,  the  same  direct 
and  exclusive  dependence  on  the  function  they  are 
fulfilling. 

Times  of  inflation  have  frequently  been  active,  pro- 
ductive periods,  and  hence,  in  spite  of  the  disasters 
which  have  followed  them,  have  been  associated  in 
men's  minds  with  prosperity.  One  might  as  well  iden- 
tify large  and  rapid  transportation  with  an  increase  of 
cars,  and  suppose  that  a  multiplication  of  this  kind  could 
at  any  time  command  business.  The  inebriate  retains  a 
clear  impression  of  the  pleasures  which  go  before  intox- 
ication, and  but  a  faint  image  of  the  penalties  which 
follow  it.  Men  are  not  completely  wrong  in  supposing 
that  an  inflated  currency  may  make  the  borrowing  of 
money  somewhat  easier;  they  are  completely  wrong  in 
supposing  that  it  will  alter  the  relation  of  debts  to 
production,  or  in  any  way  increase  the  sum  of  values. 
Superfluous  cars  may,  for  the  moment,  tend  to  cheapen 
freight,  but  cannot  be  a  condition  of  permanent  pros- 
perity. 


CUBBENCY.  285 

The  public  must  act  in  reference  to  its  collective  and 
permanent  welfare  in  establishing  currency;  and  this 
turns  exclusively  on  the  fitness  and  adequacy  of  currency 
as  a  medium  of  exchange,  and  not  on  its  immediate 
adaptation  to  the  wants  of  persons.  It  belongs  to  a 
sound  currency  to  guide  and  restrain,  as  well  as  fulfil, 
personal  impulses.  Nowhere  do  the  voluntary  and  the 
involuntary,  the  wise  choice  and  the  conditions  which 
set  it  limits,  more  freely  mingle  than  in  currency.  It  is 
impossible  to  define  the  amount  of  currency  needed.  It 
is  a  changeable  amount,  which  declares  itself  only  in  the 
actual  presence  of  commerce,  never  fully  anticipated. 
We  can  determine  what  constitutes  a  sound,  flexible  cur- 
rency ;  and  we  can  safely  trust  a  sound,  flexible  currency 
to  commercial  forces.  Soundness  is  the  fundamental 
idea.  It  limits  flexibility  and  defines  quantity.  No 
quantity  is  dangerous  which  does  not  reduce  the  central 
strength.  Nowhere  do  we  see  more  clearly  than  in  ex- 
change the  interlacing  of  all  social  activities,  and  no- 
where else  does  retribution  folloAV  so  quickly  and  so 
severely  on  the  unsound  mind  and  the  shuffling  method. 


PART  III. 

CIVICS  AS  A  FACTOR  IN  SOCIOLOGY. 


PART    III. 
CIVICS   AS   A   FACTOR   IN   SOCIOLOGY. 


CHAPTER  I. 
THE    THEORY    AND    FUNCTIONS    OF    THE    STATE. 

§  1.  Civics  discusses  the  forms  and  the  development 
of  the  state,  its  functions,  the  duties  and  rights  of  the 
citizen  in  reference  to  it,  and  its  duties  and  rights  in 
reference  to  the  citizen.  Civics  is  likely,  in  connection 
with  Sociology,  to  receive  all  and  more  than  all  the 
attention  which  belongs  to  it.  The  state  expresses  the 
most  conspicuous,  universal,  and  voluntary  organization 
among  men ;  and  men  are  ready  to  attribute  to  it  far 
more  influence  than  it  possesses.  Though  it  is  the  most 
explicit  and  positive  framework  of  order,  it  is  only  a 
framework,  and  leaves  most  of  the  enclosed  forms  of 
life  to  be  achieved.  An  enclosure  may  determine  the 
possibility  of  a  garden,  and  yet  do  very  little  to  make 
the  garden. 

Civics  lies  between  Custom  and  Economics  on  the  one 
hand,  and  Ethics  and  Religion  on  the  other.  The  vol- 
untary activities  are  more  predominant  than  in  the  first, 
and  less  so  than  in  the  second.  The  state  unites  a  high 
degree  of  voluntary  effort  with  controlling  involuntary 
conditions.     At  any  one  moment  it  deals  with  circum- 

289 


290  civics. 

stances  and  acquired  tendencies  much  too  strong  for 
direct  management;  but  in  a  long  period  it  can  greatly 
alter  its  own  terms.  Nowhere  do  the  changeable  meth- 
ods, set  a-going  by  the  will,  glide  more  quickly  than  in 
Civics  into  the  flow  of  events  that  sweep  before  them 
all  option.  The  pure  moral  impulses  that  spring  up 
in  Ethics  and  Eeligion  encounter  in  Civics  the  inertia 
and  the  momentum  alike  of  a  slow,  continuous,  univer- 
sal evolution,  and  so  sink  down  into  customs  slightly 
modified,  laws  partially  improved,  and  sentiments  a 
trifle  more  regenerative.  The  state  is  the  battle-field 
on  which  much  of  this  social  strife  is  fought  out. 

The  state,  as  a  term  in  Sociology,  can  best  be  con- 
sidered in  its  rightfulness,  its  objects,  and  its  develop- 
ment. It  is  in  these  directions  that  society,  as  a  large 
and  more  comprehensive  whole,  acts  upon  it  and  re- 
ceives its  reactions. 

§  2.  The  question  of  rightfulness  always  lies  latent 
in  every  form  of  government,  and  in  every  method  of 
administration,  and  may  at  any  moment  announce  it- 
self by  a  slight  or  a  violent  shifting  of  forces.  The 
struggle  of  the  growingly  organic  forces  of  society  with 
that  cardinal  expression  of  order,  the  state,  is  a  most 
conspicuous  part  in  human  history.  It  is  in  vain  that 
men  have  insisted,  as  in  reference  to  slavery,  that  this 
or  that  law  was  purely  political,  and  had  no  moral 
bearing.  Society,  in  its  restless  forces  seeking  better 
adjustments,  has  opened  against  every  barrier  its  ever- 
lasting fret,  and  levelled  it  before  its  untiring  and  ag- 
gressive waves. 

Government  is  an  inevitable  fact  resting  on  deep 
tendencies  in  society,  which  cannot  but  declare  them- 


BIGHTFULNESS   OE  THE  STATE.  29l 

selves.  So  far  as  government  is  inevitable,  it  is  not 
open  to  the  question  of  rightfulness.  This  test  can 
only  be  applied  in  connection  with  some  possible  change 
which  can  be  made  in  it.  Much  the  larger  share  of 
government,  which  for  the  moment  we  encounter,  is 
rightful  by  virtue  of  the  inertia  of  the  world. 

As  all  earlier  governments  assume  form  chiefly  under 
forces  which  have  a  sweep  beyond  the  wishes  of  men, 
rightfulness  is  a  question  less  pertinent  and  less  fre- 
quently urged  in  connection  with  them.  Men  raise 
it  with  earnestness  only  as  the  state  gains  form  and 
extension  under  voluntary  action.  The  question  of 
rightfulness  is  of  primary  moment  in  Sociology,  be- 
cause Sociology  is  ever  looking  forward  to  that  rational 
construction  in  which  the  lower  and  the  higher  impulses 
are  fulfilled. 

Rightfulness  is  not  primarily  a  question  of  forms  in 
government.  Forms  are  in  themselves  indifferent  to 
it.  They  are  significant  only  as  the  state,  by  means  of 
them,  fulfils  or  fails  to  fulfil  its  immediate  functions. 
Whatever  form  best  subserves  the  immediate  possibili- 
ties of  the  state  is  the  rightful  form.  The  state  is  not 
to  be  judged  by  the  theoretical  relation  of  its  parts  to 
each  other,  but  by  the  degree  in  which  it  is  securing 
the  public  welfare.  Forms  of  government  are  not  as 
distinct  within  themselves,  nor,  as  means  of  develop- 
ment, as  controlling,  as  they  are  thought  to  be.  A 
democratic  government  may  be  characterized  by  most 
arbitrary  acts  and  sweeping  tyranny.  If  a  certain 
rightfulness  is  attached  to  an  act,  simply  because  it  is 
the  act  of  the  majority,  then,  for  the  time  being,  the 
very  grounds  of  obligation  give  way,  and  the  minority 


292  clVicS. 

are  subjected  to  injury  without  even  the  right  to  com- 
plain. A  government,  monarchical  in  form,  may,  on 
the  other  hand,,  stand  in  close  response  to  the  wishes 
and  the  wants  of  a  people.  The  ordinary  divisions  of 
government  are  external  and  formal,  and  tell  little 
in  any  given  case  concerning  the  rightfulness  of  the 
state.  Their  significance  turns  chiefly  on  the  different 
degrees  of  readiness  with  which  they  respond  to  the 
life  of  the  people.  A  democratic  government  is  as 
capable  of  abuse  as  any  other,  but  it  also  keeps  the 
way  more  open  to  redress.  The  government  of  our 
large  cities,  as  of  New  York,  is  frequently  as  ineffec- 
tive, as  prodigal,  as  corrupt,  as  can  anywhere  be  found 
in  civilized  countries  ;  but  the  method  of  improvement 
is  just  at  hand. 

No  more  is  the  rightfulness  of  the  state  determined 
by  the  manner  in  which  it  has  come  into  being.  This 
is  significant  only  in  connection  with  the  way  in  which 
it  is  fulfilling  its  functions.  A  state,  in  its  origin,  may 
indicate  such  a  disregard  of  the  wishes  of  the  people  as 
to  be  a  prediction  of  tyranny.  If,  however,  the  exist- 
ing state  is  rendering  well  its  own  duties,  this  fact 
covers  all  defects  of  title ;  and  if  it  is  not,  this  fact 
invalidates  all  claims.  A  large  share,  usually  the  larger 
share,  of  the  forces  which  determine  the  form  of  a  state 
are  beyond  the  control  of  men,  and  must  be  accepted 
by  them  as  a  kind  of  fate.  The  question  of  rightful- 
ness touches  chiefly  those  modifications,  often  simply 
secondary,  which  are  at  any  moment  open  to  the  citizen. 
This  large  element  of  the  inevitable  it  was  which  gained 
recognition  and  expression  in  the  doctrine  of  passive 
resistance  —  in  the  aphorism,  The  powers  that  be  are 
ordained  of  God. 


BIGHTFULXESS   OF  THE  STATE.  203 

The  opposite  view,  so  strongly  expressed  in  the  pre- 
amble of  the  Constitution  of  Massachusetts,  and  so 
deeply  implanted  in  the  American  mind,  has  arisen  as 
a  reactionary  statement  in  the  confusion  and  contention 
which  always  exist  in  men's  thoughts  between  the  free 
and  the  necessary  in  human  affairs.  "  The  body  politic 
is  formed  by  a  voluntary  association  of  individuals.  It 
is  a  social  compact  by  which  the  whole  people  covenants 
with  each  citizen,  and  each  citizen  with  the  whole  people, 
that  all  shall  be  governed  by  certain  laws  for  the  com- 
mon good."  This  declaration  has  been  as  true  in  Mas- 
sachusetts as  it  has  ever  been  anywhere  ;  but  if  any 
portion  of  its  people  should  allow  their  option  to  carry 
them  beyond  certain  conventional  lines,  they  would  find 
at  once  that  these  phrases  had  lost  all  application. 

It  belongs  to  a  sound  Civics  to  recognize  just  as  cer- 
tainly the  inevitable  force  of  existing  sentiments  and 
existing  circumstances  as  to  recognize  the  choices  of 
men,  their  deliberate  counsels  and  well-formed  purposes. 
In  the  establishment  of  the  Constitution  of  the  United 
States  —  though  the  conditions  were  favorable  in  a  high 
degree  for  voluntary  action  —  the  struggle  was  a  pro- 
tracted and  even-handed  one  between  organic  and  inor- 
ganic forces. 

This  statement  concerning  rightfulness,  that  it  is  al- 
ways a  limited  question,  returning  constantly  under 
changing  forms,  is  established  by  the  entire  history  of 
the  world.  If  forms  of  government  and  methods  of 
formation  are  the  tests  of  legitimacy,  then  almost  all 
the  governments  of  the  world  have  been  illegitimate, 
and  our  own  government,  though  failing  in  so  many 
ways  to  protect  its  citizens   against  the  pressure   they 


294  civics. 

exert  on  each  other,  is  beyond  question.  So  we  have 
but  too  frequently  regarded  it.  The  assertion  that  the 
rightfulness  of  a  government  turns  on  the  manner  in 
which  it  is  fulfilling  its  functions  is  simply  acquiescence 
in  the  doctrine  of  development  as  applied  to  human 
history.  Equally  so  is  the  assertion  that  every  failure, 
capable  of  correction,  is  to  be  brought  home  to  the  gov- 
ernment to  which  it  pertains,  be  that  government  dem- 
ocratic in  one  degree  or  another.  The  elements  of 
tyranny  and  liberty,  compulsion  and  choice,  interpene- 
trate every  government,  and  are  far  beyond  the  exclu- 
sion and  inclusion  of  forms. 

This  view  also  treats  the  growth  of  the  state  in  closer 
analogy  to  human  affairs,  as,  for  example,  the  growth 
of  the  individual.  The  individual  is  pre-eminently  his 
own  judge.  He  is  an  autocracy.  He  is  conscious  of 
his  powers.  He  feels  that  they  lay  upon  him  duties, 
and  that  these  duties  carry  with  them  rights.  The  vol- 
untary element  is  uppermost.  And  yet  under  circum- 
stances, as  little  of  his  own  choosing  as  the  rocks  and 
rapids  and  shoals  of  a  river,  he  guides  his  boat  onward 
as  best  he  may,  taking  up  by  itself  each  bit  of  a  prob- 
lem. Thus  the  state,  with  an  inherent  energy  that 
waits  on  no  man,  finds  its  constructive  centre  now  at 
one  point,  now  at  another,  and  so  shapes  itself,  ruled 
and  ruling,  constrained  and  constraining,  toward  the 
destiny  that  lies  somewhere  between  the  fatal  and  the 
free  conditions  that  envelop  it.  Its  questions  are  nar- 
row, practical  ones,  to  which  it  brings  what  light  it  can 
of  far-off  principles.  The  state  becomes  a  quasi  person, 
achieving  for  itself  a  bearable  life.  It  is  a  survival  of 
that   winch  is   fittest,   as   defined   by   many  conflicting 


THREE   TESTS   OF  RIGHTFULNESS.  295 

tendencies.  It  is  a  germ  of  life,  submitting  to  much 
modification,  and  ever  moving  onward  with  the  circum- 
stances which  infold  it.  Government  best  prospers 
with  a  people  who,  like  the  English,  take  up  its  ques- 
tions in  a  narrow,  practical,  empirical  way. 

§  3.  The  rightfulness  of  the  state  may  be  made  a 
little  more  explicit  in  three  directions.  The  first  of 
them  is  the  bearing  of  government,  at  any  one  moment, 
on  civilization.  Civilization  stands  for  the  aggregate 
social  gains  of  a  community,  the  ways  and  degrees  in 
which  the  terms  of  life  are  present  to  the  life  enclosed 
by  it.  The  value  of  civilization  is  assumed  in  the  very 
notion  of  development,  and  civilization  is  a  convenient 
external  measure  of  development.  When  one  doubts 
the  value  of  civilization,  he  simply  raises  the  question 
whether  human  life  does  not  baffle  itself.  It  may,  in 
single  directions  and  for  short  periods;  but  life,  real 
life,  is  the  measure  of  all  good. 

That  government  is  rightful  which  gives  the  best  at- 
tainable civic  conditions  of  civilization,  with  the  least 
restraint  on  the  citizen,  and  with  his  largest  participa- 
tion in  the  common  control.  The  first  consideration, 
the  best  conditions  of  civilization,  is  the  supreme  one, 
and  involves  the  others.  The  restraints  imposed  and 
the  participation  allowed  are  to  be  judged  in  connection 
with  it.  The  character  of  the  people,  the  character  of 
rulers,  the  circumstances  under  which  both  are  acting, 
define  the  attainable.  Nothing  is  absolute,  all  is  adjust- 
able. Statesmanship  lies  in  seeing  the  highest  possi- 
bility, the  point  at  which  the  desirable  and  the  actual 
hold  each  other  in  equilibrium. 

A  second  test  of  rightfulness  in  the  state  is  that  it 


296  civics. 

confers  the  largest  possible  liberty.  Liberty  is  to  be 
understood  only  in  connection  with  powers.  It  has  no 
significance  except  as  giving  play  to  powers.  The  lar- 
gest liberty  in  the  state  means  the  greatest  aggregate 
of  powers  in  its  citizen^.  These  powers  are  individual 
and  collective,  those  which  pertain  to  each  citizen  as  a 
man,  and  those  which  pertain  to  him  as  acting  with  and 
through  his  fellow-citizens.  These  two  are  very  dis- 
tinct from  each  other,  and  may  be  in  a  measure  in  con- 
flict with  each  other.  They  are  capable,  however,  of  a 
reconciliation  which  yields  the  largest  liberty.  The  sol- 
dier owes  much  to  his  individual  endowment,  he  also 
owes  much  to  his  discipline.  Either  of  these  two  terms 
of  highest  power  may  be  sacrificed  to  the  other,  and 
both  will  be  united  in  the  best  product.  The  nation 
cannot  win  strength  aside  from  the  freedom  of  the  indi- 
vidual ;  no  more  can  it  win  the  largest  strength  aside 
from  its  own  organized  action.  There  is  precisely  the 
same  necessity  for  developing  collective,  as  for  develop- 
ing separate,  activity.  The  moment  the  one  is  sacrificed 
to  the  other,  there  is  a  loss  of  powers,  a  loss  of  liberty. 
Skill  in  acting  together  is  a  high  attainment,  as  is  also 
the  ability  to  act  alone.  Each  must  be  judged  in  its 
relation  to  the  other.  Individual  power  will  soon  find 
its  limits  without  collective  power.  Each  gives  occasion 
to  the  other. 

A  third  criterion  of  good  government  is  such  a 
conformity  of  the  restraints  of  law  to  existing  moral 
sentiments  as  to  give  the  best  conditions  of  moral  de- 
velopment. Ethical  progress  means  the  unfolding  of 
those  insights  and  feelings  by  which  men's  relations  to 
each  other  in  conduct  are  defined.     Civil  law,  as  a  pri- 


THREE   TESTS   OF  RIGHTFULNESS.  207 

mary  form  of  restraint,  should  run  parallel  with  the  laws 
of  conduct.  When  any  form  of  action  so  interrupts 
ethical  relations  as  to  prevent  their  extension,  the  com- 
munity may,  in  defence  of  its  higher  life,  prohibit  it. 
One  test  of  the  state  thus  becomes  an  adequate  protec- 
tion of  its  ethical  life.  These  defences  will  be  often 
shifted  with  the  progress  of  events.  As  rights  of  prop- 
erty and  person  become  more  complex  and  supersensu- 
ous,  new  definitions  of  these  rights  are  in  order.  As 
the  network  of  social  dependences  becomes  more  ex- 
tended and  delicate,  a  corresponding  watchfulness  is 
called  for  to  prevent  its  entanglement  by  the  careless 
and  wilful.  It  is  not  a  moral  duty  that  is  enjoined,  but 
the  security  of  moral  action  that  is  maintained.  The 
state,  in  suitable  protection,  is  not  appealing  from  moral 
to  physical  forces  as  motives  of  action,  it  is  simply  shel- 
tering moral  incentives  from  the  trespass  of  physical 
impulses.  Society  is  not  an  open  common  in  which 
profane  feet  are  left  to  tread  all  plants  into  mire  ;  it 
is  at  liberty  to  set  up  suitable  safeguards  for  every  good 
and  beautiful  thing.  Such  limitation,  wisely  laid,  far 
from  reducing  the  liberties  of  men  as  one  whole,  will 
steadily  enlarge  them.  That  which  is  won  is  always  of 
more  moment  than  that  which  is  lost.  Society,  acting 
in  obedience  to  these  tests  of  rightfulness,  adapts  govern- 
ment to  its  wants,  and  brings  its  wants,  one  after  another, 
within  the  safety  of  the  state.  The  test  of  civilization 
is  the  more  palpable  and  primary  one,  the  test  of  lib- 
erty the  more  personal  and  stimulating  one,  the  test  of 
ethical  temper  the  more  fundamental  and  inclusive  one. 
§  4.  The  rightfulness  of  the  state,  turning  on  the  ful- 
filment of  functions,  opens  the  inquiry,  What  are  these 


2(J8  CIVICS. 

functions  ?  Here  the  apparent  diversity  of  opinion  is 
great,  greater  theoretically  than  it  is  practically.  The 
first  purpose  of  the  state  is  defence,  the  second  to  con- 
fer aid,  and  the  third  to  become  a  means  of  expression 
of  collective  power.  The  preamble  of  the  Constitution 
of  the  United  States  embraces  them  all.  "  To  form  a 
more  perfect  union,  establish  justice,  insure  domestic 
tranquillity,  provide  for  the  common  defence,  promote 
the  general  welfare,  and  secure  tne  blessings  of  liberty  to 
ourselves  and  our  posterity."  The  first  four  objects  per- 
tain to  protection,  the  fifth  to  rendering  assistance,  and 
the  sixth  to  those  innumerable  ways  in  which  a  great 
nation  builds  itself  up  in  strength.  Social  theory  can- 
not proceed  without  some  adequate  idea  of  the  purposes 
of  civil  government,  and  of  those  dependent  interests 
which  nestle  in  safety  under  it. 

Those  who  confine  government  to  protection  lose 
sight  of  how  much  is  involved  in  protection,  and  of  how 
inorganic  a  community  remains  under  a  restricted  ap- 
plication of  this  idea.  It  is  a  gross  misconception  of 
protection  which  confines  it  to  person  and  property  ; 
and  even  on  this  basis  the  advocate  of  laissez  /aire 
forgets  at  what  remote  points  physical  danger  often 
appears.  Intoxicating  drinks  are  sold  by  a  publican  to 
an  inebriate.  The  forms  of  personal  liberty  are  pre- 
served in  the  transaction  itself,  but  disappear  utterly 
in  the  second  stage  of  results  involving  the  wife  and 
children.  The  protection  which  a  state  is  bound  to 
extend  to  its  citizens  cannot  be  settled  by  the  apparent 
color  of  one  in  a  series  of  acts,  cannot  be  gauged  by  the 
powers  of  an  adult,  but  must  provide  a  safety  which 
pervades     the     entire    community     and    pre-eminently 


PURPOSE   OF  THE  STATE.  209 

shelters  that  portion  of  the  community  which  is  most 
helpless ;  it  must  be  a  safety  which  makes  life  safe  and 
enjoyable.  The  protection  of  person  and  property  is 
exclusively  for  this  higher  safety,  which  is  found  in 
them  and  beyond  them.  If  the  advocate  of  protection 
will  set  himself  the  task  of  protecting,  not  the  strong 
but  the  weak,  not  the  rich  merely  but  the  poor  also, 
not  the  adult  but  the  child,  not  in  body  only  but  in 
mind  also,  he  will  find  that  his  doctrine  loses  at  once  its 
seeming  simplicity  and  adequacy. 

In  protection,  superficially  applied,  there  is  no  organ- 
ization, no  more  than  in  a  crate  of  eggs,  each  in  its  own 
cell.  Government  ceases  to  be  an  organic  force,  and 
becomes  more  and  more  a  mechanical  one.  If  this  office 
of  government  were  accepted  simply  that  room  might 
be  given  to  deeper  and  more  ethical  forces,  the  theory 
might  seem  admissible.  But  in  this  form,  experience 
is  at  war  with  it.  The  deeper  organic  processes  are 
arrested,  not  aided,  by  the  absence  of  the  more  superfi- 
cial ones.  Government,  if  it  is  to  work  with  organic 
forces,  must  itself  be  organic.  The  division  of  duties 
between  it  and  personal  activity  is  not  mechanical,  but 
one  in  which  each  portion  nourishes  and  aids  the  other. 
As  the  rough  bark  or  the  thick  skin  shelters  all  the 
vital  processes  beneath  it,  so  civil  law  brings  safety 
to  spiritual  life,  and  divides  anew  its  functions  with 
it. 

But  protection  is  absolutely  inseparable  from  aid. 
Aid  is  often  the  most  direct  path,  and  at  times  the  only 
path,  to  safety.  If  we  direct  our  attention  to  safety 
within  the  state,  we  encounter  at  once  the  problem  of 
pauperism  and  crime,  a  problem    that  never   has    been 


300  civics. 

met,  and  never  can  be  met,  by  coercion  simply.  The 
prosperity  of  the  entire  community,  in  all  its  inter- 
ests and  all  its  classes,  is  contained  in  it.  A  commu- 
nity that  by  virtue  of  its  economic  and  social  structure 
is  perpetually  pressing  downward  into  pauperism,  and 
throwing  outward  into  crime,  a  portion  of  its  citizens, 
can  never  be  protected  in  property  and  person  against 
these  dangers.  The  strong  city  of  Rome  charged  itself 
with  the  expense  of  a  sturdy  and  restless  proletariat 
because  it  had  not  sufficient  organic  force,  sufficient 
health  in  the  body  politic,  to  prevent  this  accumulation 
of  unassimilated  elements.  It  is  rolling  the  stone  of 
Sisyphus,  for  society  to  struggle  after  safety  without 
correcting  the  causes  of  which  danger  is  the  result. 

Nor  is  the  case  materially  different  when  a  nation 
seeks  protection  from  foreign  enemies.  The  safety  of 
a  nation  is  its  interior  unity  and  strength.  To  build  a 
people  together  in  power  within  themselves,  to  famil- 
iarize them  with  all  forms  of  concerted  and  patriotic 
action,  to  unite  them  in  their  purposes  and  make  them 
aidf ul  to  each  other  in  their  pursuits  —  this  is  to  make 
them  safe.  Without  this  unity  the  munitions  of  war 
become  weapons  they  cannot  wield.  A  nation,  in  its 
national  capacity,  must  regard  its  collective  interests, 
its  constructive  relations,  or  lose  its  true  footing.  The 
unharmonized  energies  of  individuals  are  first  divisive, 
then  belligerent,  then  anarchichal.  This  is  merely  say- 
ing that  a  nation  stands  or  falls  as  a  nation  by  virtue  of 
its  organic  force. 

It  is  becoming  daily  more  evident  that  a  nation,  to  be 
united,  must  gather  up  more  completely,  and  use  ever 
more  deftly,  its  collective   resources.     All  things  here 


PURPOSE  OF  THE  STATE.  301 

are  incipient.  The  lessons  of  union  have  most  of  them 
still  to  be  learned.  The  common  life  is  in  search  of  its 
true  incentives,  its  safe  methods.  Yet  the  state  has 
done  enough  to  show  that  more  may  be  done.  The 
post-office  as  a  means  of  national  affiliation  and  intelli- 
gence, bending  its  service  equally  to  the  rich  and  the 
poor,  the  near  and  the  remote,  carrying  every  man's 
message,  every  man's  paper,  every  man's  bundle,  every- 
where at  a  nominal  cost,  is  a  magnificent  expression  of 
the  common  life.  Slight  failures  do  not  abate  the  force 
of  this  assertion.  It  is  the  very  success  of  our  effort 
which  has  made  us  thus  critical.  No  more  do  the 
victories  of  private  enterprise  diminish  our  satisfaction. 
These  enterprises  have  sprung  up  under  the  shadow  of 
our  common  life,  and  have  owed  to  it  much  of  their 
efficiency  and  sense  of  responsibility.  Let  the  general 
life  be  weakened,  and  these  special  forms  of  it  will 
become  correspondingly  wayward.  The  telegraph  with 
us  ministers  much  less  to  the  democratic  temper  than 
the  post-office,  and  would  be  still  more  exclusive  were  it 
not  for  this  undeniable  proof  of  the  possibility  of  cheap 
and  general  service.  Expression  —  the  embodiment  of 
the  power  of  a  people  in  its  social  and  political  institu- 
tion —  is  the  natural  completion  of  protection  and  aid. 

We  regard,  then,  protection,  aid,  and  expression  as 
the  inseparable  functions  of  the  state,  each  assuming 
that  form  only  in  which  they  are  the  safeguards  of 
individual  enterprise.  This  they  can  easily  be,  and  so 
become  not  competitive,  but  concurrent,  forms  of 
activity. 

§  5.  If  we  have  correctly  apprehended  the  office  of 
the  state,  its  historic  evolution  will  confirm  the  view. 


302  civics. 

Its  ever-enlarging  functions,  the  greater  frequency  and 
definiteness  with  which  questions  of  rightfulness  return 
to  it,  reveal  the  fact  and  the  nature  of  its  development. 
There  are  four  social  periods  connected  with  the  his- 
tory of  government :  the  primitive  period,  in  which  the 
ties  of  consanguinity  are  uppermost,  a  period  of  weak, 
incipient,  civil  bonds  ;  the  military  period,  in  which 
tribes  and  races  begin  to  combine  under  the  pressure  of 
force,  civic  dependencies  asserting  themselves  in  a  sim- 
ple arbitrary  form  ;  the  industrial  period,  one  in  which 
a  great  multiplicity  of  social  ties  appear  both  to  soften 
and  broaden  the  restraints  of  government ;.  and  the 
social  period,  a  period  in  which  all  the  manifold  forms 
of  our  communal  life  are  present,  the  state  outlining  and 
maintaining  the  more  essential  dependencies.  These 
four  periods  involve  three  transitions.  The  first  is  from 
the  relatively  inorganic  to  the  more  organic,  from  feeble 
personal  liberty  to  national  strength.  The  growth  in 
this  stage  is  toward  authority,  as  an  essential  organizing 
force.  The  second  transition  is  within  the  limits  of 
the  state  from  collective  to  personal  development.  The 
growth  is  from  simple  authority  to  complex  liberty.  In- 
dustr}'  and  commerce  require  and  secure  freedom.  They 
magnify  the  power  of  the  individual.  Varied  industry 
and  the  liberty  associated  with  it  first  spring  up  in 
cities,  where  the  collective  life  awakens  the  individual 
life  and  shelters  it.  The  industrial  community  has  al- 
ways a  predilection  for  free  institutions.  The  third 
transition,  which  we  are  now  struggling  to  make,  is  one 
which  strives  to  reconcile  these  two  terms  of  authority 
and  liberty,  communal  and  personal  strength,  with  each 
other,  as  both  necessary  to  the  highest  organic  life. 


GU0WT1I   OF  SOCIETY.  303 

Social  growth  is  rhythmical.  It  is  dominated  in  turn 
by  ideas  held  in  excess,  but  corrected  by  each  other. 
Society  moves  forward  like  some  heavy  body  propelled 
by  inadequate  forces.  Now  one  point,  now  another,  is 
made  the  pivot  of  motion,  and  each  part  in  turn  swings 
forward.  The  two  ruling  ideas  under  which  society 
zisrzags  onward  are  collectivism  and  individualism  — 
first  the  development  of  society  as  one  whole,  then  its 
development  through  its  constituents.  The  relation  of 
the  two  is  of  the  same  direct  and  simple  order  as  that 
between  the  general  life  and  the  specific  organs  of 
the  human  body.  Specializing  processes  and  organizing 
processes  are  correlative  parts  of  one  movement. 

Whether  a  particular  period  or  a  particular  person 
will  be  found  emphasizing  personal  liberty  or  national 
life,  will  depend  on  the  current  phase  of  progress,  or  the 
predilections  of  a  given  mind.  Extreme  individualism, 
as  represented  by  Mr.  Spencer,  is  just  as  much  a  frag- 
mentary and  mistaken  tendency,  as  is  pure  socialism, 
represented  by  Marx.  Personal  liberty  cannot  thrive 
save  under  the  shelter  of  society.  Socialism,  as  mere 
mechanism,  would  fall  to  pieces  at  once,  unless  its  parts 
were  knit  together  by  vital  personal  attachments.  The 
movement  of  society  is  so  slow,  is  one  of  such  slight 
gains  at  many  times  and  in  many  places,  simply  because 
the  organization  which  expresses  vital  impulses  and  the 
vital  impulses  which  sustain  the  needed  organization 
are  begotten  together,  with  many  actions  and  reactions. 
If  the  swing  of  our  heavy  body  is  continued  too  long  on 
one  pivot,  it  is  thrown  out  of  the  line  of  progress. 

Those  who  satisfy  themselves  with  emphasizing  per- 
sonal liberty  have  only  a  narrow  outlook  over  liberty 


304  CIVICS. 

itself.  Tyranny  is  personal  liberty,  but  not  wide  per- 
sonal liberty.  Liberty  in  the  individual  is  always  liable 
to  come  into  contention  with  individual  liberty,  and 
the  two  can  only  be  harmonized  and  fulfilled  under  re- 
straints assigned  and  powers  conferred  by  the  general 
welfare.  It  is  not  sufficient  to  say  that  each  man  must 
be  granted  a  liberty  consistent  with  a  like  liberty  in  his 
fellow-citizen.  This  is  only  a  quasi  organic  result. 
Each  citizen  must  be  strengthened  by  the  strength  of 
every  other  citizen. 

Those  who  turn  their  attention  primarily  to  organic 
methods  forget  that  these  forces  must  arise  from  within, 
rather  than  from  without ;  and,  no  matter  how  secured, 
can  be  of  no  possible  value  save  as  a  medium  to  per- 
sonal power. 

It  is  just  as  much  an  achievement  in  the  progress  of 
the  race  to  develop  new  organic  power,  to  act  together 
wisely,  honestly,  patiently,  as  it  is  to  disclose  individual 
enterprise.  The  one,  like  the  other,  comes  sloAvly,  ten- 
tatively, in  correlation  with  suitable  conditions  arising 
from  the  opposite  quarter.  We  shall  never  be  great  as 
a  nation  by  decrying  nationalism,  nor  safe  as  a  people 
by  overlooking  the  safety  of  any  feeble  person. 

The  struggle  must  go  forward  between  collectivism 
and  individualism,  because  they  both  express  a  real 
want,  constantly  follow  each  other  in  mutual  correction, 
and  are  ever  taking  on  new  adjustments.  The  deepest 
ground  of  this  conflict  is  that  society  develops,  as  we 
have  said,  along  the  line  at  which  causes  and  reasons 
interact.  Causes  stand  for  existing  forces  which  must 
be  satisfied.  He  whose  attention  is  turned  to  causes 
is  ready  to  accept  as  a  general  aphorism,  "  What  is,  is 


CAUSES    AND    REASONS.  305 

right."  The  present  form  corresponds  to  the  facts  in- 
volved. Reason,  on  the  other  hand,  calls  up  ideals  that 
ought  to  be  fulfilled.  Looking  onward  toward  these  pos- 
sibilities, the  eager  mind  affirms,  "What  is,  is  wrong." 
The  facts  are  forever  falling  behind  the  developing  ideas. 
The  conservative  stands  with  causes,  the  radical  with 
reasons,  while  society,  responding  to  both,  struggles  to 
unite  them  in  a  movable  equilibrium.  It  is  strange  that 
an  evolutionist  should  overlook  the  fact  that  individu- 
alism, a  specializing  process,  must  lose  its  unbroken  line 
of  development,  separated  from  organization,  Avhich  re- 
news its  relations  and  opportunities.  Social  growth 
involves  a  slow  and  painful  synthesis  of  many  contend- 
ing forces ;  and  it  is  the  office  of  Sociology  to  discuss 
the  principles  under  which  this  takes  place,  and  point 
out  the  centres  of  formation.  It  is  the  office  of  the 
state  to  so  adjust  the  primary  compulsory  conditions 
of  order  as  to  give  liberty  alike  to  individual  and  to 
collective  action,  and  to  maintain  the  poise  between 
them  of  a  progressive  movement.  Sociology,  as  the 
wider  outlook,  is  interested  in  all  the  circumstances 
which  give  occasion  to  these  readjustments,  in  the  slow, 
tentative  ways  in  which  they  are  accomplished,  and  in 
those  ideas  which  bring  the  entire  process,  correlated 
with  other  social  processes,  into  the  light  of  reason. 


306  civics. 


CHAPTER  II. 
DEVELOPMENT    IN   THE   DUTIES    OP    THE    STATE. 

§  1.  The  state  keeps  step  with  society  in  normal 
growth,  by  a  wise  performance  of  its  recognized  duties ; 
by  enforcing  new  duties  between  citizens ;  by  itself  ac- 
cepting new  duties  ;  and  by  an  increasingly  just  exercise 
of  those  rights  which  belong  to  it.  We  shall  speak  of 
each  of  these  in  order. 

The  ruling  idea  under  which  the  state,  in  rendering 
its  own  duties  to  its  citizens,  is  to  be  judged,  is  justice. 
All  accept  protection  as  the  first  duty  of  the  state.  No 
other  duty  can  be  well  rendered  without  it.  While  the 
earliest  and  most  pressing  danger  to  the  state  may  arise 
from  without,  the  chief  function  of  government,  as  it 
becomes  permanent  and  comprehensive,  is  to  maintain 
terms  of  concord  and  strength  between  its  own  citizens. 
All  safety  hinges  on  success  at  this  point.  The  pre-emi- 
nent civic  virtue  which  this  service  develops  is  justice. 
Justice  primarily  pertains  to  the  administration  of  civil 
law.  It  means  conformity  to  the  law  in  imposing  duties 
and  protecting  rights.  It  implies  equity,  equality,  be- 
tween citizen  and  citizen  in  the  presence  of  the  law. 
The  law  is  made  the  sole  ground  of  judgment  between 
them.  Thus  far  justice  assumes  the  law  to  be  right, 
and  has  respect  simply  to  its  honest  enforcement.  But 
the  law  itself  may  come  under  discussion,  as  just  or  un- 
just.    The  law,  in  turn,  must  be  defined  by  its  relation 


EQUALITY.  307 

to  the  public  welfare.  That  law  is  just  which  is  or- 
dained in  direct,  exclusive,  and  wise  relation  to  the 
common  weal.  Here,  again,  equality  is  present,  treat- 
ing all  citizens  alike,  in  strict  subordination  to  the 
one  purpose,  the  collective  welfare. 

But  as  men  are  not  equal  in  native  or  in  acquired  re- 
sources, nor  in  the  powers  which  fall  to  them  by  virtue 
of  position,  the  state  cannot  treat  them,  in  ignorance  of 
these  facts,  as  identical  units.  Hence  has  arisen  the 
subtile  and  confusing  conflict  between  the  equality  in- 
volved in  justice,  and  the  innumerable  and  unavoidable 
inequalities  inherent  in  men's  social  relations.  Some, 
grasping  at  an  eternal  principle,  have  affirmed  that  men 
are  by  creation  equal,  and  are  possessed  of  inalienable 
rights ;  others,  equally  impressed  by  the  fact  that  soci- 
ety in  civil  procedure  is,  and  forever  must  be,  placing 
its  citizens  in  very  diverse  positions  of  advantage,  are 
ready  to  regard  the  above  assertions  as  vague  formula', 
"  glittering  generalities."  There  is  so  much  truth  in 
each  of  these  views  as  to  make  it  no  small  part  of  the 
duty  of  practical  statesmanship  to  discover  the  lines  of 
reconciliation.  The  penetrative  and  progressive  impulse 
is  that  which  clings  to  the  notion  of  equality,  and  is 
ever  in  search,  amid  all  the  confusion  of  facts  and  of 
men's  conflicting  claims,  for  its  safe  application. 

The  English  and  French  differ  at  this  point  in  their 
civic  philosophy.  The  English  define  equality  by  lib- 
erty. Liberty  is  with  them  the  primary  idea,  and  equal- 
ity makes  what  shift  it  can  under  it.  There  is  a  growing 
liberty,  but  a  liberty  that,  does  not  make  haste  to  equal- 
ize the  advantages  of  citizens.  The  French  aphorism  is 
"Liberty,  equality,  and  fraternity."     Liberty  must  lead 


808  civics. 

to  equality,  and  equality  must  issue  in  fraternity.  The 
French  philosophy  is  the  more  coherent  of  the  two.  The 
English  philosophy  is  the  more  practical,  and,  supple- 
mented as  it  has  been  by  many  other  favoring  cir- 
cumstances and  impulses,  has  shown  itself  steadily 
progressive.  Yet  English  social  life  has  admitted,  with 
no  sufficient  sense  of  wrong,  for  long  periods  a  sweeping 
tyranny  of  classes  —  as,  for  example,  the  tyranny  of 
landed  interests  at  the  opening  of  the  present  century. 

There  can  be  no  sound  philosophy  of  society  which 
does  not  aim  at  the  reconciliation  of  the  idea  of  equality 
—  which  underlies  the  notion  of  justice,  and  is  increas- 
ingly developed  with  that  notion  —  with  the  inequalities 
which  prosperous  life  is  ever  bringing  to  the  surface  in 
so  many  ways.  Yet  no  reconciliation  can  be  precise 
and  final,  because  these  inequalities  are  forever  variable, 
supply  most  of  the  incentives  to  progress,  but,  in  excess, 
tend  constantly  to  put  an  end  to  their  own  beneficence. 
Moreover,  the  inequalities  in  opportunities  among  men 
are  also  constantly  shifting  their  ground,  and  need 
to  be  renewed  in  some  fresh,  vital  way.  The  idea  of 
equality  is  ever  forecasting  some  expression  of  itself 
more  intellectual,  more  spiritual,  more  a  formula  of  the 
inner  life,  and  less  an  impossible  and  barren  weighing 
of  civic  situations  with  each  other.  The  notion  of 
equality  in  the  state  keeps  the  feet  of  every  man  and 
class  of  men  firmly  on  the  ground,  so  that  they  can  go 
forward  if  they  will.  It  renews,  with  every  successive 
generation,  the  possibilities  of  life. 

Spencer,  whose  hold  at  this  point  is  vigorous,  defines 
the  two  in  this  way :  "  The  equality  concerns  the  mu- 
tually limited  spheres  of  action  which  must  be  main- 


EQUALITY.  300 

tained  if  associated  men  are  to  co-operate  harmoniously. 
The  inequality  concerns  the  results  which  each  may 
achieve  by  carrying  on  his  actions  within  the  implied 
limits.  No  incongruity  exists  when  the  ideas  of  equal- 
ity and  inequality  are  applied,  the  one  to  the  bounds 
and  the  other  to  the  benefits." 

Carefully  as  we  may  render  these  two  notions,  posi- 
tively as  we  may  insist  on  them  both,  our  practice  under 
them  must  still  stumble  on  as  best  it  can,  in  an  atmos- 
phere much  obscured  by  the  false  renderings  which 
men  in  classes  are  ever  making  of  their  duties  to  each 
other. 

Under  the  figure  which  has  so  often  aided  us,  the 
growth  of  society  is  a  movable  equilibrium  achieved 
between  these  two  impulses,  justice,  by  which  men  seek 
and  demand  equality,  and  enterprise,  by  which  men 
strive  for  the  full  possession  of  their  own  powers.  The 
French  philosophy  is  wise  in  implying  that  there  is  no 
adequate  adjustment  of  these  two  impulses  off  a  moral 
basis,  expressed  as  fraternity.  This  civic  equilibrium 
ultimately  resolves  itself  into  the  larger  equilibrium  be- 
tween the  self-seeking  and  the  altruistic  impulses.  As 
ethical  sentiments  find  their  way  in  society,  the  good 
of  all  and  the  good  of  each  fall  into  step.  It  is  this 
very  harmony  which  is  the  primary  subject  of  consider- 
ation in  Ethics.  The  force  of  the  ethical  law  carries 
with  it  the  possibility  of  this  civic  equilibrium.  In 
other  words,  we  come  back  to  a  test  of  rightfulness  in 
the  state  already  given,  the  correspondence  of  law  with 
ethical  impulses.  Equalities  and  inequalities  glide  to- 
gether under  the  ethical  law,  the  controlling  law,  of  our 
common  life. 


310  civics. 

The  actual  condition  of  things  at  any  one  moment  in 
this  contentious  development  of  the  state  is  this:  certain 
possessions  and  advantages  have  been  acquired  by  differ- 
ent classes  of  men  under  custom  and  law ;  and  the  state, 
in  its  protective  office,  is  simply  watching  over  these 
individual  powers.  The  notion  of  equality  is  reduced  to 
its  lowest  terms,  and  means  merely  that  the  existing 
form  of  order  is  maintained,  that  none  are  allowed  to 
trespass,  in  any  unusual  way,  on  their  fellows.  Society 
is  thus  stereotyped  by  law,  and  the  notion  of  a  movable 
equilibrium  is  lost.  It  is  as  if  we  should  declare  a  race, 
and  allow  the  contestants  to  start  from  any  position  of 
advantage  they  might  chance  to  occupy. 

On  the  other  hand,  to  assign  terms  of  equality  to 
every  citizen  arbitrarily,  and  to  maintain  them  by  law, 
is  to  set  aside  the  personal  powers,  the  truly  vital 
forces,  by  which  society  advances  ;  is  to  bring  to  noth- 
ing its  incentives  to  action,  one  and  all.  The  higher 
ethical  motives  can  alone  find  play  with  the  self-inter- 
ested ones.  The  disposition  to  help  must  accompany 
the  power  to  help. 

What  society  ought  to  do  is  to  let  that  which  is  un- 
equal in  the  individual  play  under  and  with  that  which 
is  equal  in  our  communal  life,  and  out  of  the  two  ten- 
dencies secure  a  growing  spiritual  equilibrium  of  good- 
will. The  lower  impulses  cannot  be  balanced  otherwise 
than  with  the  higher  ones.  Sound  Civics  means  sound 
Ethics.  As  in  the  race  we  give,  and  are  careful  to  main- 
tain, equal  terms  for  diverse  powers  as  a  means  of  dis- 
closing their  inequalities,  so  should  we  in  society 
assiduously  renew  to  all  their  opportunities,  thtit  under 
them  their  powers  may  become  the  more  pronounced. 


EQUALITY.  311 

Protection  in  the  state  thus  involves  a  constant  effort 
to  give  all  alike  advantageous  terms  fur  the  expression 
of  power;  is  united  with  a  diligent  effort  to  correct  all 
inequalities  which  tend  to  become  permanent,  and,  by  so 
doing,  to  anticipate  all  farther  development.  Develop- 
ment, leading  to  still  greater  development,  is  the  ruling 
idea.  The  practical  difficulties,  owing  to  the  fact  that 
each  achievement  must  be  made  to  prepare  the  way 
for  another  achievement,  are  great,  but  by  no  means 
insuperable  to  wisdom  and  good-will. 

This  we  hold  to  be  the  primary  function  of  good  gov- 
ernment, not  the  maintenance  of  rights  already  won, 
the  safety  of  actualities,  but  the  renewal,  in  each  gen- 
eration, of  opportunities,  the  safety  of  potentialities,  the 
setting  in  order  of  a  new  race.  Protection  of  the  first 
form,  without  the  second,  will  slowly  turn  government 
into  an  extended  tyranny,  the  result  of  powers  that, 
once  for  all,  have  won  the  lead.  The  philosophy  of 
Civics  is  dynamical,  not  statical.  Government  can  fulfil 
its  purpose  only  by  a  perpetual  expansion  and  adapta- 
tion of  that  purpose  to  the  wants  immediately  before  it. 
The  power  to  grow  is  its  true  test. 

We  have  occasion,  under  this  notion  of  justice,  to 
discuss  Civics,  not  as  a  compendious  statement  of  fixed 
principles,  but  as  an  ever  more  vital  expression  of  those 
relations  which  knit  men  together  in  the  progress  of 
events.  As  in  the  body  of  man,  so  in  the  state,  decom- 
position and  recomposition  are  the  inseparable  parts 
of  one  continuous  process. 

§  2.  There  are  three  general  forms  of  law, — constitu- 
tional, municipal,  and  international  law.  ('(institutional 
law  is  made  up  of  the  customs  and  enactments  which 


312  CIVICS. 

organize  the  state,  defining  rulers  and  the  relation  of 
rulers  and  citizens  to  each  other.  Municipal  law  is  the 
law  which  the  state  itself  frames;  it  defines  the  rela- 
tion of  citizens  to  each  other.  International  law  is  one 
of  accepted  customs,  and  lies  between  states  and  be- 
tween their  citizens.  Constitutional  law  forms  the  state  ; 
the  state  forms  municipal  law ;  and  states  accept  inter- 
national law. 

Under  that  very  obdurate  tendency  of  the  human 
mind  which  attaches  disproportionate  importance  to 
forms,  constitutional  law  receives  more  than  its  share 
of  attention.  There  is  felt  to  be  a  virtue  in  constitu- 
tions which  is  not  in  them.  Constitutions  are  of  mo- 
ment, first,  in  the  discussions  to  which  they  give  rise  as 
to  the  rights  of  men  and  classes  of  men,  and,  second,  in 
the  phases  of  municipal  law  to  which  they  may  give 
occasion  and  in  which  they  find  completion.  That  a 
marked  change  in  the  organic  law  of  a  state  is  sure  to 
introduce  a  new  era  in  the  administration  of  law  is  a 
common  illusion.  Our  States  have  often  endeavored 
in  vain  to  remedy  the  weakness  of  municipal  law  by 
carrying  inhibition  into  the  constitution.  The  formal 
freedom  of  our  institutions  has  often  served  to  hide 
from  us  very  flagrant  faults  of  administration.  A  citi- 
zen of  New  York  City  may  be  mocked  with  an  empty 
semblance  of  self-government,  while  he  pays  heavier 
taxes  for  less  returns,  and  secures  less  safety  for  his 
personal  rights,  than  fall  to  most  civilized  men.  No 
European  state  to-day  discloses  more  public  and  private 
disaster,  as  the  fruit  of  defective  and  faulty  legislation, 
than  our  own  country.  The  simplest  economic  prob- 
lems have  been  hopelessly  perplexed,  and  classes  have 


JUDICIAL   LAW.  313 

fallen  into  a  bitterness  toward  each  other  which  has 
often  brought  them  to  the  verge  of  anarchy. 

The  eighteenth  century  in  English  history,  when  the 
free  constitution  of  England  was  taking  on  some  of  its 
most  striking  features,  was  one  of  iniquitous  municipal 
law.  On  the  other  hand,  since  the  Reform  Bill  of  1832, 
which  gave  the  first  marked  reconstruction  of  represen- 
tation and  extension  of  suffrage,  municipal  law  has  been 
enriched  and  extended  by  much  humane  legislation. 

A  free  constitution  is  an  opportunity  rather  than  its 
fulfilment,  and  may  easily  date  an  era  of  decline.  Con- 
stitutional gains  are  of  moment,  according  to  the  uses  to 
which  they  are  put.  The  telling  strokes  of  law  are  those 
which  define  the  relation  of  classes  to  each  other.  It  is 
not  the  house  that  makes  the  household.  The  interest 
of  constitutional  law  is  found  in  the  impulses  to  which 
it  is  actually  giving  play.  We  have  suffered  immensely 
from  the  idea  that  liberty  alone  is  a  panacea  of  human 
ills  ;  it  serves  rather  to  let  loose  all  the  tendencies,  evil 
and  good,  that  may  chance  to  be  in  the  community. 

§  3.  Municipal  law  has  two  forms,  judicial  law  and 
statute  law.  Law  is  a  rule  of  conduct  enforced  by  the 
state.  Judicial  law  covers  the  rights  and  duties  laid 
down  and  enforced  by  the  courts  ;  statute  law,  the  rights 
and  duties  laid  down  by  the  legislature.  The  origin  of 
the  two  and  their  method  of  development  are  very 
diverse. 

Judicial  law  arises  in  the  administration  of  justice, 
and  is  an  expression  of  the  principles  which  gradually 
find  recognition  in  the  judicial  mind.  The  coherent,  cor- 
rective, constructive,  thought  of  men,  through  successive 
generations,  hardly  gain  elsewhere  so  grand  an  expression 


314  civics. 

as  in  the  great  systems  of  law.  Theoretical  force  and 
practical  fitness  culminate  in  them.  A  series  of  the  most 
able  men,  instructed  in  a  wide  theoretical  and  practical 
way  in  the  maxims  of  justice,  and  corrected  constantly 
by  the  presence  of  urgent  and  conflicting  interests  and 
acute  advocates,  have  adjusted  their  decisions,  in  a  con- 
servative spirit,  to  the  wants  of  society.  It  is  nut 
strange  that  such  a  system  of  law,  as  the  Common  Law 
of  England,  identified  through  many  centuries  with  the 
civic  growth  of  a  great  nation,  should  have  an  over- 
whelming power,  and,  like  a  mountain  range,  settle  the 
lights  and  shades  of  an  entire  region.  Nowhere  else 
is  theoretical  truth  more  directly  guided  by  practical 
wants.  Nowhere  else  are  practical  wants,  in  their  ad- 
justment to  each  other,  over  large  surfaces  and  through 
long  periods,  more  restrained  and  instructed  by  the 
steady  light  of  general  principles.  The  judicial  decision 
is  rendered  on  the  ground  that  it  declares  the  law  as  it 
now  is.  This,  in  most  cases,  represents  the  fact.  But 
the  significant  points  in  law  are  not  those  which  fill  in 
the  spaces  already  defined,  but  those  which  alter  or  en- 
large the  lines  of  definition.  Judicial  law  is  a  steady 
growth,  and  this  growth  involves  a  readjustment  of  the 
maxims  of  law  to  variable  and  increasingly  complex 
facts.  Hence  the  great  jurist  is  one  who  most  clearly 
sees  the  need  of  change,  puts  it  in  the  closest  connec- 
tion with  the  past,  and  gives  it  the  most  fitting  form 
for  the  future.  Divided  authority,  new  circumstances, 
deeper  principles,  may  call  out  that  constructive  insight 
by  which  facts  and  theories  are  once  more  put  in  accord 
and  made  to  keep  step  in  the  pageant  of  history. 

The  great  difficulty  in  judicial  law  is  found  in  main- 


STATUTE  LAW.  315 

tabling  this  baiance  between  coherent  logical  processes 
and  the  variable  human  wants  which  arise  under  them. 
The  drama  of  reform  is  rehearsed  in  the  court-room,  too 
often  with  the  inertia  of  persons,  place,  and  profession 
against  it.  Hence  it  rarely  happens,  when  a  new  social 
interest  begins  to  push,  that  it  meets  recognition  and 
guidance  in  the  judicial  system.  It  is  much  more  likely 
to  encounter  harsh  repression.  Thus  the  combinations 
of  workmen  are  still  put  down  under  common  law,  as 
restrictive  of  the  freedom  of  trade,  and  are  only  par- 
tially rescued  by  statute.  The  safeguards  of  commerce 
have  grown  up  in  advance  of  those  touching  social  pro- 
gress. The  courts  are  ready  to  enforce  on  railroad  em- 
ployees the  duties  which  attach  to  carriers,  but  have  not 
discovered  adequate  methods  of  sheltering  the  men  who 
are  subjected  to  this  pressure  of  commercial  claims.  A 
great  mass  of  law  and  of  methods  in  the  administration 
of  law,  fitted  primarily  to  past  necessities,  are  present 
to  make  the  decisions  of  our  courts  unduly  conserva- 
tive. It  becomes  a  great  labor  so  to  quicken  the  slow 
pace  of  judicial  thought  and  procedure  as  to  make  them 
respond  to  the  general  welfare.  As  religion  accumulates 
a  great  mass  of  indigestible  dogma,  which  it  can  neither 
carry  forward  nor  abandon,  so  jurisprudence  heaps  up 
lore  which,  like  the  wealth  of  misers,  is  of  little  worth 
till  it  is  scattered  again. 

§  4.  Statute  law  is  the  chief  means  of  breaking  in  on 
judicial  law,  and  expresses  the  more  progressive  and 
reformatory  temper.  The  legislative  body  comes  more 
directly  from  the  people,  is  charged  with  the  task  of 
correcting  existing  evils  and  introducing  new  methods. 
Statutes  come  in  as  the  direct  means  of  breaking  away 


316  civics. 

from  the  old  ways  laid  down  in  judicial  law.  There  is, 
therefore,  from  the  outset,  a  liability  of  collision  be- 
tween the  two.  The  statute  is  quite  likely  not  to  be 
framed  in  thorough  recognition  of  existing  law,  or  with 
sufficient  knowledge  of  the  ways  in  which,  with  least 
disturbance  and  most  effect,  it  can  be  shaped  to  a  new 
service.  The  statute  expresses  the  temper  which  hopes 
to  work  immediate  and  adequate  reform,  with  only  a 
slight  recognition  of  the  principles  and  predispositions 
which  have  long  ruled  human  affairs.  The  statute  thus, 
too  often,  lacks  insight  and  comprehensiveness. 

But  statute  law,  in  its  execution,  comes,  in  turn,  un- 
der the  judicial  mind.  The  judiciary,  by  virtue  of  pro- 
fessional training,  by  virtue  of  a  reverence  for  the 
principles  of  law  fostered  by  a  wide  experience  of 
their  beneficence,  is  indisposed  to  accept  any  material 
change.  Hence  the  reformatory  statute,  instead  of  be- 
ing rendered  independently  and  constructively  under  its 
own  intent,  is  likely  to  be  narrowed  in  interpretation, 
and  straitened  in  use  by  the  very  spirit  and  methods 
with  which  it  was  intended  to  break.  The  two  parts  of 
law  do  not  arise  from  a  harmonious  purpose.  The 
bodies  from  which  they  spring  have  not  the  same  knowl- 
edge nor  the  same  sympathies.  They  are  resistful  to 
each  other  in  the  temper  they  express,  and  the  methods 
they  employ.  The  legs  of  the  law  are  unequal,  and  it 
has  a  limping  gait.  Our  municipal  law  is  not  the  prod- 
uct of  a  comprehensive  view,  taken  from  a  command- 
ing position,  over  the  past  and  over  the  future,  but  of 
two  views  of  unequal  distinctness,  and  but  poorly  recon- 
ciled with  each  other. 

§  5.    But  defective  as  is  the  theory  of  the  law,  it  is 


ADMINISTRATION  OF  LAW.  317 

much  superior  to  its  practice.  While  theoretically  it 
often  seems  to  be  the  fulness  of  human  wisdom,  practi- 
cally it  seems  as  frequently  the  fulness  of  human  folly, 
At  no  point  is  the  one  cardinal  truth,  that  society  is  dy- 
namical, progressive,  and  that  any  perfection  of  parts 
which  is  not  each  moment  corrected  by  an  organic  move- 
ment is  wholly  futile,  more  distinctly  seen  than  in  the 
comparative  failure  of  the  most  admirable  principles  of 
law  when  administered  in  a  technical,  unphilanthropic 
temper.  Law,  in  its  daily  services  between  citizens, 
should  be  speedy,  cheap,  certain,  and  just.  Any  perfec- 
tion of  theory  which  does  not  issue  in  these  qualities  is 
a  virtue  quite  in  the  air.  Yet  the  very  naming  of  these 
four  qualities  is  an  instant  exposure  of  the  law  as  a 
practical  method.  The  law  in  its  administration  is  slow, 
costly,  uncertain,  and  unjust.  Few  would  think  of  de- 
nying the  first  three  ;  some  might  halt  on  the  last.  But 
if  the  law  is  slow,  costly,  and  uncertain,  it  is  thereby 
unjust.  Injustice  means  an  unequal  distribution  of  civic 
awards  between  citizens  without  reference  to  the  public 
welfare.  Judgments  that  are  slow,  costly,  and  uncer- 
tain are  beyond  the  reach  of  the  poor,  judgments  that 
bring  them  little  or  no  protection,  judgments  of  which 
the  rich  can  easily  avail  themselves  as  a  means  of  perse- 
cution and  intimidation.  The  law,  instead  of  quelling 
strife,  may  become  a  primary  method  of  strife,  a  field  to 
which  those  resort  who  have  any  malicious  intent.  De- 
lay, costliness,  and  uncertainty,  instead  of  expressing 
the  patient,  laborious  way  in  which  justice  is  finally  at- 
tained, render  justice  impossible.  Justice  that  is  unduly 
deferred  can  by  no  possibility  be  justice.  In  many 
cases,  perhaps  in  the  majority  of  cases,  the  methods  of 


318  CIVICS. 

justice  are  so  faulty  as  to  more  than  compensate,  in  the 
time,  labor,  and  money  involved,  any  ultimate  success. 

This  happens  because  the  law  refuses  to  readjust  itself 
to  new  conditions,  and  slowly  accumulates  the  impedi- 
menta of  periods  worse  than  our  own.  We  are  com- 
pelled to  endure  modes  of  litigation  which  no  longer 
express  our  best  temper.  The  attack  and  defence  of 
law  grew  up  in  a  violent  and  contentious  time.  Law 
was  cautious,  stubborn,  technical  warfare,  substituted 
for  open  violence.  The  citizen  could  no  more  assume 
a  disposition  in  his  fellow-citizens  —  or  in  the  courts  — 
to  render  justice  in  a  simple,  direct  way,  than  he  could 
in  an  angry  out-door  quarrel.  The  delays,  subterfuges, 
and  technicalities  of  legal  procedure  are  as  much  parts 
of  a  belligerent  system  as  the  parry  and  thrust  of 
defence. 

In  settling  to-day  simply  personal  and  property  rights, 
we  may  be  called  on  to  fight  through  the  entire  code  of 
a  mediaeval  duel.  Admirable  as  a  method  of  procedure 
may  be,  looked  on  as  a  manual  of  arms,  where  nothing 
is  to  be  conceded  and  everything  is  to  be  claimed,  it  is 
in  a  like  degree  false  and  futile  when  employed  as  a 
means  of  settlement  between  relatively  peaceful  citizens, 
who  have  not  the  same  view  of  their  rights.  Law  in  its 
administration  grew  out  of  the  most  bitter  and  uneon- 
cessive  temper  possible;  and  it  retains  much  of  that 
method,  serving  only  to  inflame  a  passion  that  would 
not  otherwise  be  present. 

It  is  impossible,  under  such  conditions,  that  law  in 
the  person  of  its  judges  should  be  a  wise,  patient,  benign 
presence,  rebuking  the  wrong-doer  and  extending  ready 
protection  to  the  weak.     Such  a  notion  is  so  ideal  as  to 


MISCARRIAGE  OF  LAW.  319 

be  fanciful.  The  oppression  of  the  strong  reappears  in 
the  administration  of  the  law,  and  not  infrequently 
finds  it  the  safest  and  most  effective  weapon.  "  A  fish 
hangs  in  the  net  like  a  poor  man's  right  in  the  law  ; 
'twill  hardly  come  out." 

This  fact,  so  palpable  in  itself,  is  hidden  from  us  he- 
cause  the  process  by  which  it  has  been  reached  has  had 
an  inevitableness  and  subtilty  which  seem  to  put  it  be- 
yond criticism.  We  are  unable  to  pass  on  to  that 
which  is  better,  because  some  of  the  old  passion  is  with 
us,  because  we  abandon  with  reluctance  these  familiar 
and  ingenious  devices  of  allaying  strife,  —  as  we  are 
still  determined  to  think  them,  —  and  because  we  are 
afraid  of  losing  our  way  in  a  simple  search  after  right- 
eousness. 

§  G.  The  miscarriage  of  justice  is  frequent,  and  occurs 
in  a  great  variety  of  ways.  Here  is  a  single  example.  The 
Jump  River  Lumbering  Company,  by  the  roughness  of 
the  railroad  used  by  it  in  logging,  by  the  inadequate 
manner  in  which  the  logs  were  chained  to  the  platform 
cars,  and  by  obstructions  left  in  the  immediate  neighbor- 
hood of  the  track,  gave  occasion  to  an  accident  which 
utterly  crippled  a  brakeman,  Mark  Haley.  He  prose- 
cuted the  company  in  the  Circuit  Court  of  Columbia 
County,  Wisconsin,  and  obtained  a  verdict  for  $15,000. 
The  case  was  carried  by  appeal  to  the  Supreme  Court  of 
the  State,  and  the  verdict  was  set  aside.  The  ground 
on  which  this  was  done  was  the  instructions  given  by  the 
judge  to  the  jury  in  the  inferior  court.  These,  it  was 
held,  were  not  accurate  under  the  law.  There  \\  ;is  noth- 
ing to  show  any  injustice  in  the  verdict,  or  that  it  would 
have  been  in  any  way  altered  by  the  amended  instruc- 


320  CIVICS. 

tions.  The  decision  rested  simply  on  the  fact  that  the 
judge  had  failed  in  the  perfect  performance  of  his  duty. 
This  result  Avas  reached  by  the  Supreme  Court  in  pres- 
ence of  the  facts  that  the  plaintiff,  entirely  ruined  in 
body,  was  the  owner  of  no  property,  that  his  aged  mother 
was  poor  and  unable  to  support  him,  and  that  the  prob- 
able result  of  the  action  of  the  court  would  be  to  send 
the  plaintiff  to  the  poor-house,  and  set  free  the  company 
whose  negligence  had  occasioned  the  injury.  Under  his 
failure  to  maintain  his  suit,  the  plaintiff  was  charged 
with  the  costs  of  appeal,  $550.  The  law  required  that 
this  judgment  should  be  paid  and  the  case  be  brought  on 
for  a  new  trial  within  one  year,  or  the  complaint  be  dis- 
missed. The  plaintiff  had  incurred  a  debt  of  $800  in 
the  first  suit,  and  was  wholly  without  the  means  with 
which  to  renew  his  effort.  Thus  a  poor  man,  grievously 
injured,  to  whom  the  jury  had  awarded  $15,000,  was 
robbed  by  a  strong  company  of  all  means  of  redress, 
with  no  fault  on  his  part,  simply  by  the  defective  char- 
acter of  the  law.  It  matters  not  in  the  least  whether 
the  decision  of  the  Supreme  Court  was  technically  correct 
or  incorrect,  it  issued  in  the  grossest  injustice.  We  have 
here  a  fact  of  frequent  occurrence  in  the  law  brought 
distinctly  out,  that  formal  correctness  is  made  to  take 
the  place,  in  men's  minds,  of  actual  justice.  The  methods 
of  the  law  were  such  as  to  easily  lend  themselves  to  a 
fresh  wrong,  and  did  lend  themselves  to  it.  Under  them 
a  poor  man  had  little  chance  of  redress  in  the  presence 
of  a  powerful  adversary.  The  law  united  with  the  op- 
pressor to  crush  the  weak.  The  more  completely  this 
result  was  legal,  the  more  perfectly  was  the  law  con- 
demned.    The  injustice  became  the  direct  consequence 


klSCARRlAGE   OF  LAW.  S21 

of  the  law  itself.  If  we  were  to  follow  the  law  minutely, 
in  its  administration,  we  should  find  it  offering  itself 
constantly  to  the  rich  as  a  means  of  oppression.  Is 
there  not  great  moral  weakness  in  regarding  this  practi- 
cal failure  of  law  to  do  its  work  as  in  some  way  neces- 
sarily involved  in  its  theoretical  completeness,  and  to  be 
accepted  in  silence  on  that  ground  ? 

The  law  also  offers  examples  of  most  despotic  penal- 
ties. William  McNair  of  New  York  City  was  sentenced 
to  four  months  imprisonment  and  a  fine  of  $500  for  send- 
ing to  Senator  McClelland  a  postal  with  these  words  : 
...  "  Permit  me  to  ask  you  in  reply,  Did  you  ever 
earn  an  honest  dollar  in  your  life  ?  If  you  have,  you 
should  be  ashamed  of  yourself,  as  a  public  servant,  to 
make  use  of  such  language  against  the  unfortunate  and 
honest  railroad  employee,  whose  interest  is  centred  in 
said  bill.  May  I  ask,  How  much  have  railroads  prom- 
ised you  for  such  action  ?  No  doubt  you  will  reply  and 
say,  '  It  is  none  of  my  business.'  But  later  on  it  will  be 
my  business."  The  card  was  drawn  out  by  the  assertion 
of  Senator  McClelland  that  a  bill,  making  ten  hours  a 
day's  work,  came  "from  labor  tramps  who  do  not  want 
to  work."  Just  now  Judge  Woods,  at  Chicago,  has 
sentenced  to  imprisonment  persons  for  contempt,  whose 
action  had  no  connection  with  the  court  over  which  he 
presides.  He  first  gave  to  his  own  injunction  the  force 
of  a  general  statute,  and  then,  of  his  own  will,  with  no 
trial  by  jury,  committed  the  offenders  to  prison.  He 
has  thus  extended  the  most  peremptory  power  which 
a  court  possesses  over   the  entire  community. 

§  7.  Tin:  remedies  of  these  evils,  wrought  deeply  into 
the  administration  of  law,  are  incomplete,  indeed,   but 


822  civics. 

are  capable  of  repeated  application.  There  should  be 
the  means,  in  connection  with  legislation,  of  harmoniz- 
ing statute  law  and  judicial  law,  and  reducing  the  col- 
lision between  them.  The  legislature  and  the  judiciary 
should  not  be  bodies  opposed  to  each  other  by  their 
antecedents  and  by  their  present  relations,  but  should 
find  in  a  judiciary  committee  a  common  ground  of  con- 
sultation. The  legislature  needs  to  be  impressed  with 
the  weight  of  permanent  principles,  and  equally  does 
the  judiciary  need  to  feel  the  constant  occasion  there  is 
to  reshape  the  law  to  the  changing  conditions  of  life,  and 
to  bend  it  anew  to  the  simple  end  of  justice.  It  is  now 
impossible  to  tell  how  far  a  wise  and  beneficent  purpose, 
on  the  part  of  the  legislature,  will  be  able  to  complete 
itself,  on  account  of  the  embarrassments  the  law  may  en- 
counter in  the  courts.  Not  till  a  law  has  been  subjected 
to  extended  judicial  interpretation  and  administration  do 
we  know  what  will  come  of  it.  The  remedy  is  vague ; 
but  it  is  vague  because  the  difficulty  is  profound,  and 
must  find  its  final  solution  in  an  improved  social  temper. 
Courts  of  conciliation  should  be  greatly  extended.  If 
any  man  wishes  to  know  the  law  in  order  that  he  may 
obey  it,  —  and  there  are  many  such,  —  he  should  be  able 
to  secure  its  announcement  in  an  authoritative,  speedy, 
and  inexpensive  way.  It  is  a  shame  that  the  only  alter- 
native open  to  a  good  citizen  should  be  to  waive  his 
rights,  or  to  pursue  them  by  litigation,  ruinous  alike  to 
his  feelings  and  his  interests.  The  law  is  primarily  con- 
structed for  litigation  ;  it  should  be  primarily  constructed 
for  conciliation.  The  means  for  strife,  issuing  in  accu- 
mulated and  irremediable  wrongs,  are  abundant ;  the 
means  of  preserving  one's  own  rights,  with  a  circumspect 


COD  IF IC  A  TION.  3  23 

attention  to  the  rights  of  others,  are  few.  The  law  pro- 
vides for  disobedience  rather  than  for  obedience.  Courts 
of  arbitration  should  be  multiplied,  and  additional  au- 
thority given  them.  If  any  alleged  wrong  lies  between 
citizens  or  classes,  it  should  be  the  right  of  either  party 
to  secure  a  decision  by  a  competent  tribunal.  If  a  ver- 
dict thus  secured  is  disregarded  by  either  contestant, 
it  should  then  become  the  right  of  the  other  contestant 
to  have  an  action  for  any  damages  which  may  follow 
this  disregard.  Our  present  method  is  to  fight  out  a 
quarrel,  and  extend  and  prolong  it  as  much  as  possible 
by  the  instrumentality  of  the  courts.  Thus,  in  the 
Homestead  affair,  the  law  showed  very  little  conciliatory 
or  mandatory  power.  It  was  now  here,  now  there,  as 
the  sagacity  of  counsel  and  the  wealth  of  clients  en- 
abled them  to  draw  it  after  them.  Suits  were  com- 
menced by  the  hundred  which  fell  to  the  ground  when 
the  anger  of  the  parties  had  grown  cold. 

The  law  should  be  repeatedly  codified  in  favor  of  a 
more  certain  and  speedy  fulfilment  of  its  purposes.  The 
need  of  codification,  from  the  immense  volume  of  com- 
mon law,  from  the  diverse  tendencies  which  lie  latent 
within  it,  and  from  the  earnest  need  that  it  should  yield 
itself  in  new  ways  to  the  wants  of  society,  has  become 
increasingly  plain.  To  refuse  it  means  to  accept  great 
evils  as  without  remedy.  Judicial  law  is  of  such  bulk 
and  such  diversity  as  to  place  it  beyond  any  man's  ac- 
quisition. In  matters  at  all  complicated,  there  is  no 
certainty  as  to  what  the  law  is,  or  what,  under  judica- 
tion, it  will  be  declared  to  be.  A  lawyer,  when  lie  gives 
counsel,  assumes  a  risk,  and  then  puts  forth  his  utmost 
effort  to  make  the  results   respond  to   his   predictions. 


324  CIVICS. 

The  degrees  of  esteem  in  which  lawyers  are  held  turn 
as  much  on  their  sagacity  in  supporting  their  opinions 
as  on  their  wisdom  in  giving  them.  The  digests  of  law 
relieve  this  evil  in  a  very  inadequate  way.  "  The  Amer- 
ican and  English  Encyclopaedia  of  Law  "  is  expected  to 
reach  twenty-eight  volumes,  and  to  contain  700,000 
cases.  There  were  recently  advertised  230,000  jackets 
—  envelopes  containing  the  leading  cases  bearing  on  a 
given  question  —  the  results  of  the  effort  of  a  single 
lawyer  somewhat  to  simplify  his  labor.1  '  "  England  is 
the  one  country  in  western  Europe  where  it  is  most  dif- 
ficult for  a  man  who  is  not  a  lawyer  by  profession  to 
have  any  clear  notion  of  the  law  he  lives  under."  2 

It  is  true  that  codification  is  more  successful  in  its 
apparent  than  in  its  actual  results ;  that  differences 
may  be  overlooked  or  obscured  by  it  which  must  be 
restored  again  in  practice ;  and  that  its  concise  state- 
ments will  begin  at  once  to  bring  new  renderings  and 
show  fresh  divisions.  But  this  is  only  saying  that  an 
effort  for  simplification  must  be  wise  and  long  contin- 
ued. The  need  is  not  shown  to  be  less,  but  the  labor  in 
meeting  it  to  be  greater. 

Not  only  is  the  law  in  its  present  forms  beyond  any 
man's  knowledge,  it  is  not  in  itself  well  defined  and  con- 
sistent. If  it  were,  this  immense  volume  of  precedents 
would  shrivel  up  at  once,  its  parts  being  repetitions  of 
each  other.  The  law  is  a  great  seed-bed,  yielding  many 
diverse  germs.  It  is  the  variety  of  choice  offered  in 
initiatory  ideas,  and  in  the  reconciliation  of  subordinate 
ones,  which  is  the  occasion   of  uncertainty  and  delay. 

1  "Law  Reform  in  the  United  States,"  D.  D.  Field. 

2  "Jurisprudence  and  Ethics,"  Frederick  Pollock,  p.  63. 


CODIFICATION.  325 

Out  "of  diverse  principles,  scattered  confusedly  through 
an  immense  number  of  cases,  there  arises  the  possibility 
of  reaching  and  defending  very  different  conclusions. 
"  The  law  of  property  is  in  fact  so  intricate  and  con- 
fused that  not  only  no  lawyer  can  understand  it,  but 
it  is  almost  impossible  even  for  experts  who  do  under- 
stand it  to  translate  it  as  it  stands  into  anything  like 
plain  English."1  It  is  certainly  absurd,  looked  at 
in  any  common-sense  way,  for  the  law  to  be  thus 
hidden  in  its  primary  meaning  by  its  own  accretions. 
It  is  a  fatty  degeneration  of  the  heart  which  threatens 
life. 

Nor  is  the  third  reason  for  codification  and  repeated 
codification  of  less  moment.  Statutes,  reformatory  in 
temper,  corrective  in  method,  new  in  principle,  are 
added  as  authoritative  terms  to  judicial  law.  Judicial 
law  must  take  kindly  to  them,  and  cheerfully  accept  the 
new  direction,  if  these  statutes  are  to  subserve  their  pur- 
pose. Not  only  must  the  dominant  ideas  of  justice  be 
coherently  developed  in  their  own  field,  they  must 
accept  the  corrective  and  correlative  ideas  which  are 
arising  from  the  altered  relations  of  men  in  society.  A 
principle  which  defines  a  property  right  may,  i:i  its 
development,  come  in  conflict  with  personal  liberty. 
Codification  aims  to  reconcile  judicial  decisions  with 
themselves  and  with  statute  law,  and  to  render  the 
joint  product  a  concise  statement  bearing  directly  on 
the  public  welfare.  A  benevolent  and  practical  temper, 
understanding  what  it  has  to  do  and  determined  to 
accomplish  it.  takes  the  place  of  a  professional  and 
technical  one,  pleased   with  the  ingenuity  of  the  web  it 

i  "  Jurisprudence  and  Ethics,"  Frederick  Pollock,  p.  71. 


326  civics. 

weaves,  but  forgetful  of  the  weak  who  are  hopelessly 
entangled  in  its  meshes. 

The  consequences  of  this  voluminous  development  of 
the  law  are  most  painful  and  stultifying.  Said  I).  D. 
Field,  "No  other  civilized  community  takes  so  long  a 
time  to  punish  a  criminal  and  reach  a  decision  between 
man  and  man.  Justice  passes  through  the  land  on 
leaden  sandals.  Yet  we  have  70,000  lawyers,  1  to  909; 
France  1  to  4762 ;  Germany  1  to  6423.  American  law- 
yers talk  more  and  speed  less  than  any  other  equal 
number  of  men  known  to  history."1  The  Tilden  will 
may  be  offered  as  an  example  of  litigation  ended  at 
length  by  a  single  voice.  The  case  came  before  eleven 
judges  ;  six  were  for  the  decision  which  set  aside  the 
bequest,  and  five  against  it.  It  was  in  the  process  of 
determination  from  March,  1888,  to  October,  1891. 

Many  of  the  most  important  decisions  of  the  Supreme 
Court  are  those  of  a  majority,  and  on  critical  questions 
have  not  been  in  successive  years  consistent  with  them- 
selves. Certainly,  to  settle  what  the  law  is,  is  properly 
antecedent  to  administering  it.  It  is  hardly  fair,  deal- 
ing with  plaintiff  or  defendant,  that  he  should  suffer 
both  the  penalty  of  the  law,  and  the  costly  litigation 
by  which  the  law  itself  is  declared.  The  ideal  which 
plain  men  would  seek  for  has  been  given  —  "laws  easy 
to  be  understood,  a  judiciary  honest  and  independent,  a 
fearless  bar  guided  by  law  and  conscience,  every  suit 
ended  within  a  year."  2  Is  this  statement  of  the  desira- 
ble so  excessively  ideal  as  to  be  beyond  effort  ? 

§  8.    Of  equal  practical  moment  with  the  simplifica- 

1  Quoted  iii  Perry's  "  Principles  of  Political  Economy,"  p.  206. 

2  "Law  Reform  in  the  United  States,"  D.  D.  Field. 


FORMS   OF  ADMINISTRATION.  327 

tion  of  law  is  the  simplification  of  its  administration. 
When  justice  is  hard  to  be  obtained,  the  forms  of  pro- 
cedure are  of  as  much  moment  as  the  claims  prosecuted 
under  them.  In  early,  rude  periods,  complex  customs 
are  a  safety  more  than  an  embarrassment.  The  profes- 
sional temper,  nourished  by  this  fact,  comes  to  attach 
the  same  importance  to  the  method  of  the  law  as  to  the 
law  itself,  nay  more,  as  the  method  often  baffles  the  law 
it  administers.  The  past  thus  becomes  an  intolerable 
burden  to  the  present.  A  better  disposition  finds  no 
way  of  expressing  itself.  A  simplified  code  of  civil  pro- 
cedure was,  with  much  opposition,  adopted  in  New  York 
in  1<S48.  This  movement  has  slowly  extended  to  the 
majority  of  the  States.  It  was  not  till  1881  that  New 
York  accepted  a  corrected  code  of  criminal  procedure. 

The  division  into  States,  while  it  has  brought  with  it 
in  a  high  degree  the  blessings  of  local  government,  has 
also  involved  much  confusion  in  law.  For  purposes  of 
intercourse  we  are  a  single  community,  but  this  inter- 
course takes  place  across  boundaries  of  law  that  might 
belong  to  distinct  nations.  The  original  States  had 
diverse  tendencies,  and  each  section  has  been  tenacious 
of  its  sectional  life.  Local  impulses  express  themselves 
in  laws  which  needlessly  complicate  the  common  devel- 
opment. There  is  no  well-defined  boundary  between 
general  and  local  laws,  laws  which  the  States  should 
possess  in  common  and  laws  by  which  they  express  their 
special  interests.  There  has  been  but  little  effort  hith- 
erto to  watch  over  the  national  life,  and  give  it  uniform 
force  in  the  several  States.  Unfortunate,  vexatious,  and 
meaningless  differences  of  law  have  been  frequent. 
Laws  of  divorce  bearing  on  identically  the  same  rela- 


QO 


28  civics. 


tions,  and  on  relations  fundamental  in  social  welfare, 
have  been  present  in  different  States  to  the  injury  of  all. 
Each  State  is  compelled,  in  a  measure,  to  submit  the 
soundness  of  its  own  social  construction  to  that  of  an 
adjoining  community.  The  lowest  standard  tends  to 
become  the  standard  of  all.  Local  option,  the  last  step 
before  we  reach  anarchy  in  law,  has  become  a  favorite 
policy  of  weakness  and  division  with  us. 

A  movement,  begun  by  the  American  Bar  Associa- 
tion, aims  to  secure  agreement  in  the  several  States  in 
the  great  essentials  of  law.  "We  have  not  yet  learned 
how  to  unite  local  development  and  national  life  in  the 
composite  development.  Laws  of  the  family,  of  real 
estate  and  forms  of  transfer,  laws  that  must  constantly 
seek  execution  in  the  distance,  ought  to  assume  a  com- 
mon form  suited  to  our  general  wants.  We  have,  in  this 
diversity  of  law,  another  phase  of  the  conflict  between 
individualism  and  collectivism,  with  a  perceptible  pre- 
dominance hitherto  of  the  former  tendency.  We  can- 
not wisely  defer  a  patient  and  conservative  effort  to 
give  our  united  life  more  adequate  expression. 

§  9.  The  corrections  suggested  will  owe  their  value 
chiefly  to  a  higher  temper  which  they  will  express  and 
call  out.  A  more  beneficent  and  less  conventional 
mind  is  distinctly  called  for  in  judges,  lawyers,  and  citi- 
zens, one  which  aims  more  directly  at  comprehensive 
welfare.  The  laws  should  not  remain  old  barriers  across 
which  men,  in  successive  generations,  fight  their  battles, 
the  judges  enforcing  the  rules  of  the  game,  but  regula- 
tions assigning  new  conditions  and  safeguards  to  our 
growing  prosperity.  It  is  the  office  of  the  judge  to 
bring  each  suit,  in  the  shortest  time  and  least  expen- 


HIGHER    TEMPER.  329 

sive  way,  to  a  satisfactory  issue;  to  watch  over,  facili- 
tate, and  make  felicitous  all  the  processes  of  justice. 

The  lawyer  is  bound  also  to  make  justice  his  exclusive 
purpose,  seeking  it  primarily  as  it  bears  on  his  client. 
The  idea  so  generally  accepted  that  the  lawyer  owes  his 
best  efforts  to  his  client  in  carrying  out  his  purpose, 
irrespective  of  the  interests  of  society,  introduces  law- 
lessness into  the  very  circle  of  law,  and  leaves  law  to  be 
torn  into  shreds  by  contestants  according  to  their  re- 
spective ability.  The  learning,  acuteness,  and  skill  of  a 
great  profession  are  put  in  the  market,  and  degraded  to 
the  service  of  any  man  who  can  pay  for  them  ;  in  crimi- 
nal trials,  they  submit  themselves  to  the  worst  vices  of 
men,  and  the  most  dangerous  evils  of  society.  If  one  is 
bound,  irrespective  of  justice,  to  do  what  he  can  for  his 
client,  he  is  equally  bound  to  accept  that  client,  irre- 
spective of  character. 

So  thoroughly  has  this  professional  sense  of  honor, 
by  which  a  man  submits  his  own  conscience  and  the 
welfare  of  men  to  a  client,  and  he,  perchance,  a  villain, 
prevailed,  that  that  which  should  have  been  the  shame 
of  one  set  apart  to  aid  in  the  administration  of  law 
has  become  his  great  distinction.  Daniel  O'Connell,  "a 
crafty  lawyer,  master  of  the  quirks  and  quibbles  of 
law" — quirks  and  quibbles  which  seemed  to  be  re- 
tained as  the  dice  of  gamblers  —  "boasted  that  he  could 
drive  a  coach  and  six  through  any  Act  of  Parliament." 
"Glorious  old  Tom  Marshall,"  of  Pittsburg,  claimed 
that  he  had  defended  more  murderers  than  any  other 
lawyer  in  the  United  States,  and  that  all  but  three  had 
escaped  punishment.  Rufus  Choate  was  once  defend- 
ing a  case  in  Boston.     One  of  those  implicated  in  the 


330  civics. 

robbery  was  asked,  "  what  had  led  him  to  venture  on 
such  a  crime?"  The  answer  was,  "We  thought  that 
if  the  money  was  found  in  our  boots,  Choate  could  get 
us  off."  Such  lawyers  should  rank  with  those  whose 
fortunes  they  espouse.  They  make  it  their  business, 
a  business  they  pursue  with  large  resources  and  much 
honor,  to  protect  the  determined  foes  of  society.  A 
lawyer  who  congratulates  himself,  and  accepts  the  con- 
gratulations of  others,  on  winning  a  suit  without  refer- 
ence to  its  merits,  is  doing  what  he  can  to  confound 
justice  and  make  it  habitually  miscarry,  is  putting  his 
own  false  honor  in  place  of  the  welfare  of  society.  "  In 
England,  in  the  last  of  the  eighteenth  century,  a  suit  to 
recover  40s.  could  not,  if  defended,  cost  less  than  £50. 
The  expenses  to  recover  £81,791  were  £285,950."  1 

With  this  identification  of  the  lawyer  and  his  client 
has  come  the  disposition  to  confuse  and  browbeat 
witnesses.  A  cross-examination  often  means,  not  an  at- 
tempt to  elicit  the  truth,  but  an  effort  utterly  to  con- 
found it.  In  one  case  the  Supreme  Court  of  Michigan 
rejected  the  decision  of  a  lower  court  because  of  the 
"bulldozing  and  browbeating"  of  a  witness.  Though 
in  the  majority  of  cases  something  like  justice  may  be 
reached  in  our  courts,  they  so  often  fail  of  it  as  to  de- 
stroy the  confidence  of  the  intelligent  citizen,  and  lead 
him  to  look  upon  the  administration  of  law  as  one  of 
the  irremediable  evils  of  the  world. 

It  is  high  time  that  men  refused  to  accept  the  lame 
results  of  a  profession  that  is  lagging  behind  its  duties. 
No  verdicts  and   wrong  verdicts  are  not  the  inevitable 

1  "  History  of  England  in  the  Eighteenth  Century,"  W.  S.  H. 
Lecky,  vol.  vi.  p.  260. 


CORRECTION.  331 

things  we  choose  to  think  them.  The  great  ends  of 
law  are  as  open  to  our  attainment  as  any  equally  com- 
prehensive good.  The  disposition  to  correct  an  evil  is 
a  more  difficult  attainment  than  the  correction  itself. 
The  law  is  now  so  badly  administered  that  redress 
is  often  refused  because  the  injured  person  will  not 
venture  to  push  his  claims  ;  or  a  prosecution  is  com- 
menced as  a  means  of  annoyance  and  of  exhaustion;  or 
claims  are  set  up  that  the  contested  profits  may  be  re- 
tained during  the  slow  process  of  the  suit.  The  public 
must  demand  more  as  a  means  of  getting  more.  Sociol- 
ogy interests  itself  not  in  the  theory  of  law  simply,  but 
in  the  manner  in  which  it  is  playing  its  part  in  our 
complex  life. 


332  civics. 


CHAPTER  III. 

CRIME    AND  PAUPERISM. 

§  1.  The  most  constant  and  universal  office  of  the 
state  is  the  definition  of  rights  and  duties  between 
citizens  involved  in  municipal  law.  Herein  civic  ideas 
take  form.  In  the  formation  and  the  administration 
of  law,  the  state  is  working  chiefly  under  the  end  of 
protection.  It  is  open  to  criticism  chiefly  because  the 
protection  it  offers  is  so  inadequate,  so  slow,  and  so 
costly. 

The  most  direct  form  which  protection  assumes  is 
criminal  law  and  poor  laws.  The  defects  which  creep 
in  at  this  point  are  even  greater  than  those  which  at- 
tach to  civil  law,  as  the  interests  dealt  with  lie  between 
classes  wide  apart,  and  can  easily  be  handled  in  a  way 
at  once  arbitrary  and  negligent.  Justice  requires  in 
criminal  law  a  wise  and  uniform  determination  of  what 
is  crime,  —  a  punishable  offence  against  the  public  wel- 
fare —  and  a  speedy,  certain,  and  suitable  penalty. 

The  first  condition  of  securing  due  force  in  the  admin- 
istration of  justice  is  that  it  shall  be  justice,  a  visitation 
of  punishment  on  all  offences  against  the  public  weal 
according  to  their  magnitude.  An  inequality  which 
constantly  shows  itself  in  criminal  law  is  a  disposition 
to  deal  decidedly  with  the  offences  of  the  weak  against 
the  strong,  and  lightly  with  the  offences  of  the  strong 
against   the   weak.     Theft    and   robbery    are    severely 


CRIMINAL    LAW,  333 

punished,  while  fraud,  misappropriation,  and  all  the 
nameless  dishonesties  by  which  wealth  is  so  frequently 
acquired,  arc  punished  slightly  or  pass  unheeded.  The 
temper  under  which  a  girl  of  twenty-two  was  hung  in 
England  for  receiving  a  piece  of  check  which  had  been 
stolen  has,  indeed,  been  greatly  softened,  but  has  not 
yet  been  supplanted  by  a  wide  and  equitable  definition 
of  offences  against  property  and  person.1  Robbery  may 
extend  itself  right  and  left  through  the  entire  com- 
munity, reaching  the  food  on  every  man's  table ;  but  if 
it  is  termed  a  corner  in  the  produce  market,  the  rob- 
ber appropriates  his  gains  with  applause.  Violence, 
the  cheap  offence  of  the  poor,  is  summarily  restrained  ; 
impurity,  the  costly  offence  of  the  rich,  is  punished 
lightly.  Purity,  the  germ  of  all  civilization,  has  greatly 
lacked  faithful  protection. 

Laws,  because  they  are  made  and  enforced  by  the 
strong,  never  deal  quite  fairly  with  the  lower  classes. 
They  assume  that  those  above  need  stringent  protection 
from  those  below,  and  forget  that  those  below  need  even 
more  careful  protection  from  those  above.  Take  such  an 
item  as  contracts.  The  contracts  of  the  poor  are  verbal, 
are  almost  completely  without  enforcement  in  law,  and 
leave  the  laborer  in  the  hands  of  the  employer.  There  is 
in  the  business  of  life  no  parity  between  the  two.  It  is 
not  even  admitted  that  there  ought  to  be,  or  can  be,  any 
parity.  The  employee  can  be  shaken  off  any  moment 
for  any  reason,  and  be  left  to  catch  on  again  as  he  can. 
The  law  has  made  no  effort  to  shelter  his  path,  but  has 
left  him  to  defend  himself  as  best  he  may.  A  corrective 
tendency   shows   itself   feebly  among    higher    forms    of 

>  "  History  of  England  in  the  Eighteenth  Century,"  vol.  vi.  p.  281. 


334  civics. 

labor.  A  longer  customary  period  of  service  is  conceded, 
and  summary  dismissal  is  somewhat  restrained. 

There  is  a  disposition  to  deal  lightly  with  offences  to 
which  any  considerable  number  are  addicted,  especial- 
ly when  the  evils  are  widely  scattered,  and  fall  chiefly 
on  the  feeble.  The  state  pleads  its  own  weakness,  and 
excuses  itself  from  much  of  its  work.  It  undertakes  to 
regulate  the  sale  of  intoxicating  drinks,  finds  its  own 
profit  in  its  method,  and  then  leaves  the  immeasurable 
disasters  of  the  trade  to  spread  themselves  all  through 
the  lower  strata  of  society.  Generation  after  generation, 
a  great  crowd,  men  who  have  passed  beyond  the  stage 
of  self-control,  women  and  children  dependent  on  them 
and  exposed  to  them,  those  who  have  reached  the  level 
which  lies  below  the  range  of  moral  motives,  the  dis- 
eased, the  idiotic,  and  the  insane,  largely  the  product  of 
this  debasement,  are  left  unguarded  by  a  criminal  law 
which  is  pursuing  thieves,  and  watching  over  the  safety 
of  those  whose  safety  is  assured  by  their  own  strength. 

There  is  a  tendency  in  the  execution  of  criminal  law, 
in  keeping  with  the  temper  with  which  it  is  framed,  to 
pass  lightly  over  certain  illegal  acts  and  give  them  an 
illicit  standing  in  society.  Houses  of  prostitution, 
gambling-houses,  are  accepted  against  the  letter  of  the 
law,  and  subjected  to  the  corrupt  management  of  the 
police.  Those  who  administer  the  law  sit  a  second  time 
on  the  law,  and  declare  its  intent.  The  law  becomes 
so  completely  an  instrument  of  private  ends,  a  make- 
shift in  the  shuffling  ways  of  self-interest,  as  to  lose  the 
integrity  and  authority  which  belong  to  it.  Justice 
smacks  of  injustice,  so  unequal  is  it  in  its  various  forms. 

This  result  is  more  extended  and  more  ruinous  in  free 


CRIMINAL   LAW.  335 


than  in  arbitrary  governments.  The  ruler  is  debauched 
in  the  same  degree  and  by  the  same  process  as  the 
ruled,  and  correction  must  make  for  itself  a  slow,  obscure 
way  through  the  entire  community. 

A  current  number  of  The  Nation  has  these  won  Is 
concerning  the  state  of  affairs  in  New  York  City  : 
"Everybody  knows  that  criminal  resorts  flourish  in 
defiance  of  law,  and  there  is  a  general  belief  that  they 
pay  liberally  for  their  immunity.  It  is  also  a  general 
belief  that  liquor-dealers  pay  handsomely  for  various  pri- 
vileges which  are  denied  them  under  the  law  ....  If 
a  committee  were  to  disclose  the  relation  of  the  Tam- 
many authorities  through  the  police  department  with 
the  gambling-houses,  liquor-saloons,  dives,  brothels,  and 
other  resorts  of  crime  and  vice  of  the  city,  we  should 
have  a  revelation  the  like  of  which  had  never  been  made 
before."  l 

This  revelation  came  through  the  Lexow  Committee; 
and  because  the  evil  had  grown  up  under  knowledge  and 
negligence,  the  mode  of  redress  remains  slow  and  ob- 
scure. There  are  still  those  who  feel,  in  spite  of  these 
deadly  evils,  that  the  vices  of  a  city  need  some  indul- 
gence. 

With  this  temporizing  administration  of  justice  comes 
the  disposition  to  disregard  the  crimes  of  the  poor  and 
vicious  against  themselves,  if  they  can  be  kept  out  of 
sight.  Thus  every  form  of  crime,  from  murder  up- 
ward, is  committed  in  our  great  cities,  with  little  inter- 
vention on  the  part  of  the  police,  if  there  is  nothing 
in  the  social  position  of  those  concerned  to  compel  it. 
Thus   crime,   like  disease,   is   bred  in  dark   places,  and 

1  The  Nation,  vol.  lvii.  p.  363. 


336  civics. 

abides  its  opportunity  to  break  out  on  the  community 
at  large. 

For  a  considerable  period,  dens  of  infamy,  guarded 
places  of  crime,  existed  among  the  rough  population  of 
northern  Wisconsin;  and  the  executive  officers  of  the 
State  spent  their  strength  in  denying  their  existence  in 
place  of  suppressing  them.  When  a  community  fails  to 
make,  according  to  the  conditions  then  and  there  pres- 
ent, a  wise  and  comprehensive  definition  of  justice,  the 
justice  it  does  seek  after  will  perish  in  its  hands. 

§  2.  The  second  failure  in  criminal  law  is  the  lack  of 
speedy,  certain,  and  suitable  punishment.  Next  in  im- 
portance to  a  fitting  penalty  is  the  certainty  of  its 
speedy  infliction.  No  excellency  in  the  punishment  is 
of  avail  without  this  promptness  of  administration.  Our 
criminal  laws  are  often  so  enforced  as  to  take  all  pith 
out  of  them.  The  same  person  will  sell  in  a  single  com- 
munity intoxicating  drinks,  either  the  sale  or  the  method 
of  sale  being  contrary  to  law,  for  a  series  of  years,  and 
cover  the  fines  by  a  portion  of  the  profits. 

Of  the  murders  committed  in  the  United  States,  only 
a  small  portion  meet  with  punishment ;  and  of  these 
punishments  more  are  inflicted  by  lynching,  in  defiance 
of  law,  than  by  the  officers  of  justice,  in  defence  of  law. 
The  soundness  of  men's  thoughts,  and  the  wholesome- 
ness  of  the  ties  which  knit  them  in  society,  suffer  rapid 
decay.  The  New  York  Court  of  Appeals  recently  ad- 
ministered this  rebuke :  "  When  all  the  forms  of  law 
have  been  observed,  and  the  defendant  has  had  every 
opportunity  to  make  his  defence,  and  his  conviction  has 
been  affirmed  by  the  highest  courts  of  the  state,  the  con- 
test in  the  courts  should  end.  .  .  .     The  forms  of  law 


LOCAL    OPTION.  337 

should  not  be  used  to  subvert  the  criminal  law  of  the 
state.  Attorneys  and  counsellors,  admitted  to  practise 
iu  the  courts  of  the  state,  are  under  duty  to  aid  in  the 
administration  of  justice,  and  they  cannot,  in  consis- 
tency with  this  duty,  engage  in  vexatious  proceedings 
merely  for  the  purpose  of  undermining  the  final  judg- 
ments of  the  courts,  and  defeating  the  behests  of  the 
law.  It  ought  to  become  a  subject  of  inquiry,  therefore, 
whether  they  can  thus  become  the  allies  of  the- criminal 
classes  and  the  foes  of  organized  society,  without  expos- 
ing themselves  to  the  disciplinary  powers  of  the  Supreme 
Court." 

If  we  guide  our  judgments  by  strict  principles  of  jus- 
tice, the  possession  of  wealth  will,  in  most  cases,  enhance 
the  guilt  of  crime,  as  it  indicates  less  temptation  and  a 
more  grave  disregard  of  the  public  welfare.  Yet  wealth 
shows  its  full  power,  in  the  execution  of  our  criminal 
law.  in  securing  escape,  acquittal,  delay,  light  penalties, 
and  pardon.  The  commercial  temper  pushes  its  way 
into  the  court-room.  Justice  is  summary  or  slow,  deci- 
sive or  uncertain,  according  to  the  interests  associated 
with  it. 

§  3.  Another  weakness  in  our  criminal  law  is  the  dis- 
position to  make  it  a  matter  of  local  option.  Wide  social 
necessities  are  put  on  the  footing  of  local  concerns,  and 
remanded  to  those  interested  in  them  for  settlement. 
In  the  anti-slavery  conflict,  we  introduced  the  idea  of 
local  option.  Each  Territory  was  to  settle  for  itself  a 
policy  than  which  none  could  be  more  national.  We 
were  ready  to  waive  the  sovereignty  of  the  nation  in 
favor  of  "squatter  sovereignty."  There  are  no  police 
regulations  more  difficult  of  execution,  more  intimately 


388  r/r/r.s. 

associated  with  the  entire  administration  of  criminal 
law,  more  uniform  in  the  evils  they  involve,  than  those 
which  pertain  to  the  sale  of  intoxicating  drinks.  Yet, 
with  that  feebleness  which  characterizes  all  moral  com- 
promises, we  have  given  wide  sweep  to  local  option,  with 
the  result  that  the  enforcement  of  law  becomes  impossi- 
ble in  the  narrow  territory  that  imposes  restraints ;  that 
the  same  communities  are  in  a  constant  flutter  of  transi- 
tion between  license  and  no-license,  finding  them  equally 
intolerable ;  and  that  large  cities,  in  which  restraint  is 
most  needed  and  vice  is  most  rampant,  are  left  to  sink 
lower  and  lower  under  their  downward  tendencies,  and 
plead  their  own  sins  against  the  remedy. 

We  must  recognize  the  fundamental  and  commanding 
character  of  the  duties  men  owe  each  other  in  society, 
and  be  prepared  to  treat  them  with  breadth  and  power, 
before  we  can  claim  or  secure  any  notable  success.  A 
temporizing  spirit,  by  which  we  give  way  before  deter- 
mined opposition,  must  subject  us  to  the  slow  growth  of 
crime.  The  pure  moral  forces  we  may  invoke  will  be 
robbed  of  their  staying  power.  We  shall  have  no  suffi- 
cient barrier  of  law  behind  which  to  rally  resistance. 
We  shall  be  looking  for  victory  without  the  courage  to 
win  it. 

§  4.  A  weakness  akin  to  this  of  local  option,  and  its 
natural  product,  are  committees  of  public  safety,  law 
and  order  leagues,  which  assume  prominence  in  our  cities 
and  villages  as  a  means  of  enforcing  law.  What  do  they, 
one  and  all,  mean  ?  They  mean  that  we  have  allowed 
the  law  itself  and  the  officers  of  the  law  to  fail  us,  and 
are  now  striving  to  supplement  them  or  displace  them 
by  a  temporary,  extemporized  process  of  our  own.    These 


I. AW  AND   OUIJER   LEAGUES.  8o9 

efforts  must  end  in  failure.  Those  who  cannot  control 
the  ordinary  and  suitable  processes  that  have  back  of 
them  the  organized  power  of  the  community,  can  neither 
displace  them,  nor,  for  any  considerable  period,  force 
them  into  suitable  activity.  The  only  legitimate  way, 
the  only  possible  way,  of  governing  a  community  is 
through  its  own  civil  officers.  If  we  cannot  do  this,  Ave 
have  not  strength  enough  to  do  the  more  difficult  thing, 
control  them  and  the  community  also.  It  is  absurd  to 
suppose  that  we  can  build  up  a  state  within  a  state. 
The  government  we  unite  to  organize,  in  whose  hands 
we  put  all  the  machinery  of  law,  whose  officers  are  sup- 
ported by  the  state,  and  have  at  their  disposal  suitable 
times,  convenient  opportunities,  and  the  moral  force  of 
an  imposed  service,  must  protect  us,  or  we  shall  be 
without  protection.  Our  spasmodic  efforts  serve,  aside 
from  the  usual  forms  of  law,  only  to  exhaust  us,  and 
must  end  in  failure.  They  are  liable,  from  the  very  out- 
set, to  be  in  open  or  secret  opposition  to  the  officers  of 
the  law,  whose  actions  they  undertake  to  correct.  This 
opposition  will  develop  into  hostility,  and  throw  back 
on  the  committee  or  league  the  fundamental  question, 
their  ability  to  reach  the  desired  results  through  the 
government  itself.  The  law  and  the  officers  of  the  law 
are  one  and  the  same  thing  through  any  considerable 
period.  It  is  because  we  forget  this  fact,  and  separate 
our  laws  from  those  who  interpret  and  apply  them,  that 
we  so  often  deceive  ourselves  and  others  by  directing 
our  attention  to  the  statute  book,  instead  of  the  law 
actually  potent  with  us. 

Our  large  cities  have  more  and  more  fallen  into  the 
hands  of  the  police,  themselves  receiving  their  power,  at 


840  civics. 

a  slight  remove,  from  those  involved  in  crime.  The 
people  wish  one  thing;  the  legislature  give  a  restricted 
expression  to  the  desire ;  the  executive  officers  of  the 
state,  in  still  closer  contact  with  the  persons  to  be  re- 
strained, determine  what  part  of  the  law  shall  be  en- 
forced and  in  what  way.  Instead  of  correcting  the  evil 
by  the  very  processes  through  which  it  has  arisen,  we 
rebel,  from  time  to  time,  in  an  ineffectual  way,  and  then 
sink  back  into  servitude.  The  only  easy  and  successful 
method  of  administering  government  is  by  the  officers  of 
government.  The  only  forcible  way  in  which  the  moral, 
civic  sentiment  of  a  community  can  express  itself  is 
suitable  laws.  The  only  manner  in  which  these  laws 
can  gain  reality  is  through  the  officers  of  the  law.  Law 
is  impersonal,  powerless,  till  we  clothe  it  with  the  per- 
sonality and  powers  of  those  to  whom  we  commit  it. 
The  citizen  must  rule  the  law  and  the  Officers  of  the  law 
as  the  only  channel  of  legal  expression.  All  efforts  in 
other  directions  are  spasmodic,  of  value  only  as  they 
raise  and  answer  this  primary  question  —  the  effective- 
ness of  law.     • 

§  5.  Closely  associated  with  crime  is  pauperism.  In 
both  we  are  dealing  with  the  same  great  difficulty,  a 
more  or  less  chronic  failure  of  social  organic  forces  to 
do  their  work.  Grave  objections  are  thought  to  hold 
against  public  and  private  charities,  and  they  do  hold 
so  far  as  to  render  the  method  of  administration  a  very 
difficult  and  delicate  one.     It  is  said  of  state  charities 

* 

that  they  lay  the  burden  of  the  indolent,  improvident, 
vicious,  on  the  industrious,  prudent,  and  virtuous,  and  so 
act  as  a  natural  selection  in  favor  of  the  least  valuable 
members  of  society.     The  objection  is  sufficient  to  im- 


PAUPERISM.  341 

pose  great  caution,  but  not  sufficient  to  break  through 
those  social  and  moral  ties  which  bind  us  to  each  other. 
We  do  not  rest  on  simply  natural  selection,  but  on  the 
higher  election  of  moral  life.  If  we  disregard  the 
higher  impulse,  so  much  will  perish  with  it  as  ulti- 
mately to  ingulf  our  entire  prosperity. 

It  is  said  that  public  charities  are  administered  with 
little  discrimination,  soon  lose  personal  sympathy,  and 
come  to  be  regarded  as  a  right  on  the  part  of  those  who 
receive  them.  These  objections  are  so  true  that  they 
uncover  the  depths  of  the  evil  with  which  we  have  to 
deal,  but  leave  with  us  the  entire  task  of  correction. 
Our  difficulties,  like  sloughs  in  the  highway,  deepen  by 
being  let  alone.  As  pauperism  is  the  product  of  sub- 
tile and  extended  defects  in  the  social  life,  it  can  be 
overcome  only  by  correspondingly  wide  and  thorough 
methods. 

It  is  objected  to  private  charity  that  it  assumes  a 
weak,  sentimental  form,  on  which  a  pauper  temper,  as 
in  tramps,  feeds  and  fattens.  Some  are  ready  to  think 
that  the  charity  of  the  early  church,  though  a  virtuous 
one,  undid  most  of  the  good  it  accomplished.  Here, 
again,  we  are  dealing  with  conflicting  tendencies,  which 
can  be  reconciled  only  by  blended  wisdom  and  good- 
Avill.  The  charity  of  the  world,  mistaken  as  much  of  it 
lias  been,  has  wrought  in  the  heart  of  the  giver  and  in 
the  heart  of  the  receiver  salvation,  partial  and  inef- 
fectual as  that  salvation  lias  been.  There  are  no  royal 
roads.  We  travel  on  those  which  turn  now  to  the  right, 
now  to  the  left,  and  in  all  directions  encounter  the  full 
variety  of  obstacles.  We  cannot  excuse  ourselves  in 
that  which  is  good  from  completing  its  goodness  in  wis- 


342  civics. 

dom.  Good-will  redeems  much,  but  not  persistent  folly. 
Nowhere  is  perfection  more  difficult  of  attainment  than 
when  we  encounter  that  confused  aggregate  of  evil  ex- 
pressed by  pauperism,  on  this  side  a  hard  and  forgetful 
temper,  on  that  a  weak  and  indolent  one ;  here  unwise 
sympathy,  and  there  unsympathetic  wisdom.  This  run- 
ning sore  will  be  the  latest  one  to  heal. 

§  6.  Private  gifts  can  never  fully  occupy,  nor  ade- 
quately control,  the  large  field  of  charity.  The  general 
outline  and  the  ruling  forces  must  be  furnished  by  the 
state.  There  will  always  be  unoccupied,  or  partially  oc- 
cupied, spaces  sufficient  to  employ  private  charity.  The 
state,  in  furtherance  of  the  general  welfare,  must  accept, 
in  its  primary  and  stern  forms,  the  guidance  and  correc- 
tion of  its  weaker  members.  The  state  can  no  more  be 
allowed  to  be  inhuman  than  can  the  individual.  The 
results  are  the  same  in  either  case.  There  are  no  natu- 
ral laws  which  will  rid  society  of  the  poor  and  the  vi- 
cious without  its  own  intervention.  Poverty  and  vice 
beget  poverty  and  vice.  Extreme  suffering  enhances, 
rather  than  reduces,  the  evil.  Society  cannot  sacrifice 
its  own  moral  integrity.  It  is  bound,  by  a  law  it  cannot 
escape,  to  put  forth  the  corrective  effort.  But  if  society 
must  do  anything  to  remove  pauperism,  it  must  do  it  in 
the  most  complete  and  adequate  way. 

Pauperism  is  due  in  part  to  organic  defects  in  society. 
These  maladjustments  may  be  obscure,  but  their  presence 
is  disclosed  by  extreme  poverty  as  an  habitual  product. 
Thus  in  England,  for  a  long  period,  the  wages  of  farm- 
labor  were  determined  by  law,  and  the  laborer  was  ex- 
pected  to  receive  a  considerable  part  of  his  support  from 
the   poor-rates.      Public  charities  were  made  necessary 


PAUPERISM.  343 

by  bad  laws,  reduced  in  part  the  evil  of  these  laws,  and 
left  the  laborer  in  hopeless  dependence.  Poverty  in 
every  community  is  associated  with  the  civic  rights, 
social  incentives,  economic  opportunities,  which  enclose 
its  citizens  and  determine  their  development.  Pauper- 
ism is  a  civic,  a  social,  and  a  personal  disease,  and  must 
be  treated  in  the  entire  circuit  of  its  causes.1 

The  burden  of  pauperism  cannot  be  escaped.  It  rests 
least  heavily  when  we  meet  it  manfully.  There  is  in 
every  civilized  community  —  and,  aside  from  wise  ef- 
forts of  correction,  increasingly  as  a  nation  grows  older 
—  a  class  of  persons  so  degenerate,  either  in  physical  or 
intellectual  or  moral  qualities  or  in  them  all,  as  to  be 
unable  or  indisposed  to  provide  for  themselves.  They 
fall  below  the  standard  of  life  about  them,  and  seem 
on  the  verge  of  extinction  without  being  exterminated. 
The  richer  classes  may  not  ordinarily  suffer  much  from 
their  presence,  and  the  evils  of  it  find  them  out  furtively 
and  remotelv.  The  class  next  above  those  whose  ina- 
bility  or  improvidence  are  chronic  is  much  burdened  by 
them.  Barely  able  to  maintain  its  position,  it  is  pressed 
in  hard  times  by  the  competition  of  those  below  it,  and 
is  constantly  liable  to  slip  to  their  level.  The  subsistence 
of  the  very  poorest  is  secured,  in  part,  at  the  expense  of 
those  who  are  not  prepared  to  endure  any  additional 
strain.  This  second  class,  by  its  distress,  distresses  the 
class  next  above  it.  Thus  the  burden  of  poverty,  at 
the  very  bottom  of  society,  hangs  as  a  dead  weight  on 
the  industrial  enterprise  of  the  community  at  large,  and 
enhances  every  embarrassment  which  overtakes  it.  The, 
diffusion   of  the   evil  hides   it,   but  leaves   it  to   inflict 

1  A  mi  rii  Mn  Charities,  Amos  G.  Warner. 


314  civics. 

a  maximum  of  mischief  and  to  renew  itself  in  e very- 
generation.  The  prosperity  and  the  power  of  purchase 
of  the  working-classes  stand  for  the  wealth  and  strength 
of  society  far  more  than  does  the  abundance  of  the  few. 
The  depression  of  the  lowest  classes  reaches  the  pros- 
perous by  its  general  effect  on  society,  and  by  the  re- 
duced social  and  moral  tone  to  which  it  gives  rise.  The 
reactions  are  remote,  but  very  comprehensive. 

Poverty  and  crime,  though  different  expressions  of 
social  weakness,  are  inseparable  from  each  other.  The 
same  causes  strengthen  both.  Society  must  deal  with 
crime,  but  it  cannot  deal  effectively  with  it  separate 
from  pauperism.  An  adequate  correction  of  the  one 
will  bring  correction  to  the  other.  If  we  would  expel 
the  criminal  tendency  from  society,  —  and  this  is  not 
too  comprehensive  a  purpose  —  we  should  find  that  our 
contention  would  involve  at  once  those  economic  and 
moral  forces  which  are  issuing  in  extreme  poverty. 
The  criminal,  like  the  pauper,  succumbs  to  conditions 
too  hard  for  his  moral  fibre. 

Society,  as  one  whole,  alone  has  the  responsibility, 
the  necessity,  and  the  power  which  prepare  the  way  for 
a  thorough  treatment  of  the  conjoint  problem  of  pauper- 
ism and  crime.  Whatever  individuals  may  be  willing 
to  do,  the  task  is  beyond  their  strength.  Their  efforts 
at  best  will  be  feeble  palliatives.  It  is  a  duty  and  a 
discipline  which  attach  to  our  joint  lives  to  deal  with 
those  social  conditions  which  by  some  physical  or  civic 
or  moral  fault  are  constantly  casting  out  from  the  pro- 
cesses of  growth,  as  refuse  matter,  the  pauper  and  the 
criminal.  An  evil  so  deeply  organic  cannot  be  success- 
fully   treated    in    the    rough    way    of    penalty    simply. 


GROWTH  OF  CHIME.  315 

Having  suffered  tlie  weak  to  fall  out  of  the  ranks  by 
virtue  of  hardship,  we  shall  not  restore  them  again  by 
still  greater  hardship.  The  problem,  as  a  physical,  so- 
cial, moral  one,  cannot  be  treated  oh  any  one  side  alone. 

§  7.  Society,  though  it  has  come  into  possession  of 
many  important  principles,  has  thus  far  handled  pauper- 
ism and  crime  in  an  ineffective  way.  Crime,  in  the 
United  States,  has  of  late  years  been  on  the  rapid  in- 
crease ;  and  pauperism,  as  expressed  in  the  numbers  of 
tramps,  has  taken  on  startling  dimensions.  In  1850, 
there  was  one  criminal  in  3,500  ;  in  1890,  one  in  786. 
While  much  of  this  growth  in  crime  is  referrible  to  the 
great  extension  of  police  offences,  —  and  some  are  ready 
to  claim  this  as  a  sufficient  explanation,1  —  the  number 
of  murders  reported  in  the  United  States,  the  infre- 
quency  of  punishment,  and  the  increase  of  lynching, 
show  but  too  plainly  a  deep-seated  and  growing  danger. 
In  1882,  the  number  reported  was  1,266;  punishments, 
93  ;  lynchings,  118.  In  1889,  number,  3,568 ;  punish- 
ments, 98 ;  lynchings,  175.  In  1893,  number,  6,615 ; 
punishments,  126  ;  lynchings,  200.  In  1891,  number, 
9,800;   punishments,  132  ;   lynchings,  190. 

An  increase  of  crime  in  England  and  Wales  of  indict- 
able as  well  as  of  police  offences  has  been  affirmed.2  It 
is  certainly  plain  that  society  is  called  on  to  treat  this 
danger  with  new  wisdom  and  decision.  The  first  step 
in  such  a  treatment  is  a  more  comprehensive  recogni- 
tion of  the  causes  of  pauperism  and  crime.  The  method 
of  dealing  with  them  must,  be  both  corrective  and  re- 
pressive.     Repression  has  but  little  power  without  cor- 

1  Elijah  C.  Foster,  Forum,  December,  1891. 

2  "\V.  D.  Morrison,  Nineteenth  Century,  June.  1892. 


34G  CIVICS. 

rection.  These  causes  are  complex.  Among  the  social 
causes  of  pauperism  and  crime  are  methods  of  busi- 
ness, estimates  of  personal  rights,  laws  and  customs 
which  serve  to  separate  different  classes  of  men  and 
narrow  in  the  opportunities  of  the  more  feeble,  the 
sentiments  which  restrain  sympathy  and  make  censure 
cruel.  Severe  pressure  on  those  less  well  endowed  re- 
duces the  incentives  to  industry,  and  confirms  the  habit 
of  mind  which  issues  in  pauperism  and  crime.  It  is  the 
commencement  of  the  process  of  expulsion.  Degrada- 
tion begets  poverty  and  crime  as  certainly  as  poverty 
and  crime  beget  degradation.  The  first  and  most  suc- 
cessful contention  against  these  twin  evils  is  a  true 
democracy  of  opportunity,  of  social  incentives.  "We 
owed  much  of  our  earlier  exemption  from  crime  to  our 
exhaustless  resources ;  we  owe,  in  part,  the  present  in- 
crease in  crime  to  the  unscrupulous  way  in  which  these 
resources  have  been  appropriated. 

It  has  been  observed  that  periods  of  restrained 
enterprise  are  less  favorable  to  crime  than  periods 
of  unusual  activity.1  So  far  as  this  observation  is 
just,  the  fact  would  seem  to  be  due  to  the  weaken- 
ing of  conventional  restraints,  the  inflaming  of  desires, 
and  the  sense  of  injury  which  accompany  specula- 
tion. An  advanced  standard  of  living,  equable  and 
equitable  social  relations,  strengthen  industry  and  hon- 
esty. They  show  the  organic  force  then  and  there  at 
work. 

A  second  social  provocative  to  pauperism  and  crime 
is  a  lazy,  fluctuating  treatment  of  them  ;  a  tendency  to 
diminish    our   own    moral    responsibility    in    connection 

i    "  Crime  and  its  Causes,"  W.  D.  Morrison. 


CAUSES   OF  PAUPERISM  AND   CRIME.        347 

with  them  by  enhancing  the  responsibility  of  those  in- 
volved in  them.  Such  a  method  partakes  of  the  same 
feeble  moral  temper  out  of  which  the  mischief  is  aris- 
ing. Not  till  society  is  ready  to  put  forth  its  collective 
strength  to  resist  decay,  will  there  be  cogency  enough 
of  life  to  conquer  this  decay. 

The  personal  element  in  pauperism  and  crime  has  re- 
ceived relatively  excessive  emphasis.  It  has  led  us  to 
look  on  these  evils  as  narrowly  contained  in  the  volun- 
tary habit  of  those  subject  to  them,  and  capable  of 
removal  by  punishment,  artificial  or  natural.  There 
is  far  too  little  virtue  in  the  anger  of  society,  far  too 
much  fault  in  its  own  action,  to  make  its  moods  of 
indignation  effective.  If  we  pass  from  the  extreme 
of  crime,  preying  actively  on  society,  to  the  extreme  of 
poverty,  preying  passively  upon  it,  we  shall  find  at 
every  stage  a  deficiency  in  original  endowment  and  ac- 
quired characteristics,  which  distinguish  these  unsocial 
classes  —  classes  not  subject  to  the  same  motives  as 
their  fellow-citizens  —  from  those  fully  obedient  to  so- 
cial law.  The  distinctive  criminal  exhibits  a  deficiency 
in  moral  motives,  the  distinctive  pauper  in  social  mo- 
tives ;  neither  has  the  full  capacity  of  a  man.  The  one 
is  wanting  in  spiritual  powers,  the  other  in  intellectual 
and  physical  ones.  A  class  peculiar  in  its  conscious 
life,  its  range  of  motives,  cannot  be  treated  precisely 
as  if  it  were  normal  in  these  respects.  In  these  per- 
sonal characteristics  are  enclosed  many  physical  ten- 
dencies and  narrow  social  phases  which  have  come  by 
inheritance.  Perverted  physical  endowment,  warped 
feelings,  inferior  intellectual  powers,  social  relations 
that  have  enhanced    the  evil   not   helped   it,   make  up  a 


348  civics. 

composite  product  not  to  be  broken  in  on  by  feeble  and 
partial  methods.1 

A  single  family  in  the  State  of  New  York,  in  seventy- 
five  years,  furnished  280  paupers,  140  criminals,  50 
prostitutes,  and  cost  the  State  $1,308,000. 2  A  false  or- 
ganic growth  was  thus  allowed  to  fasten  on  the  social 
body  and  thrive  with  it.  Society,  in  dealing  with  evils 
of  this  magnitude,  must  remember  how  normal  they 
are  to  its  own  present  constitution,  and  how  thoroughly 
that  constitution  must  itself  be  renovated,  if  even  a 
heroic  remedy  is  to  be  permanent. 

Those  who  come  under  the  designation  of  paupers 
and  criminals,  at  any  one  time,  are  a  motley  crowd. 
Some  are  there  simply  by  virtue  of  circumstances  too 
hard  for  them  ;  some  because  of  an  unfavorable  balance 
of  motives,  which,  in  their  early  development,  offered 
occasions  of  easy  correction  ;  and  some  as  the  hopeless 
embodiment  of  the  chronic  evils  of  their  class.  Here  is 
occasion  for  careful  discrimination,  a  sympathetic  ap- 
peal to  every  remedial  impulse,  a  surrounding  of  each 
with  corrective  forces  according  to  his  type  of  diffi- 
culty and  disease.  The  purpose  should  be  to  save  all 
that  can  be  saved,  and  to  put  an  end  to  those  incapable 
of  cure.  The  entire  energy  of  society  should  be  di- 
rected to  both  of  these  ends,  as  inseparable  from  each 
other  in  a  true  remedial  method.  This  is,  at  bottom, 
the  truly  moral  temper,  and  has  the  highest  moral  sanc- 
tion. To  regard  crime  as  wholly  a  moral  evil  is  super- 
ficial morality.  Better  insight  teaches  us  how  deeply 
bad  moral  quality  is  intertwined  with  our  physical  and 

i  "  Punishment  and  Reformation,"  F.  H.  Wines. 
8  The  Jukes. 


CORRECTION  OF  CRIME.  349 

social  life,  and  with  what  a  bold,  firm,  kind  hand  we 
must  cut  it  out. 

The  punishment  of  crime  by  a  definite  sentence,  with 
little  or  no  provision  for  correction  in  character  or  res- 
toration in  social  position,  under  circumstances  which 
tend  to  deepen  every  depraved  tendency  and  repress 
hope,  is  profoundly  unreasonable,  and  is  as  unfruitful 
of  good  as  the  passionate  outbreak  of  a  weak  parent 
against  a  refractory  child. 

The  moment  one  falls  into  the  hand  of  society  by 
virtue  of  inability  to  provide  for  himself,  or  because 
of  acts  of  violence  against  society,  he  loses  the  gov- 
ernment of  his  own  life.  Society  should,  for  its  own 
welfare,  assume,  so  far  as  needful,  control,  and  with 
wisdom  and  good-will  begin  the  correction  of  the  evil. 
Inexhaustible  authority  and  profound  responsibility  are 
united  in  this  supreme  charge,  the  public  welfare.  That 
form  of  justice  by  which  criminals,  with  an  increased 
criminal  intent,  are  let  out  on  the  community  again  and 
again,  the  community  taking  upon  itself  the  dangers 
and  the  charges  of  recapture  and  conviction,  is  a  strange 
record  of  unwisdom,  sustained  by  a  purely  conventional 
sense  of  justice. 

When  we  accept,  in  confirmed  vice  and  hopeless  pau- 
perism, the  same  individualism  which  we  are  anxious 
to  call  out  in  the  virtuous  and  the  industrious,  we  con- 
found disease  with  health,  and  put  them  both  under 
the  same  law.  What  society  has  the  duty  and  the 
right  to  do  at  all,  it  has  the  right  and  duty  to  do  thor- 
oughly and  well.  We  strive  to  anticipate  disease,  to 
cure  it,  and  to  prevent  its  extension.  We  do  well  to 
anticipate  crime  and  pauperism  by  favorable  social  con- 


350  (ivies. 

ditions,  to  cure  them,  and  to  prevent  their  propagation. 
The  method  may  not  be  always  plain  ;  but  it  will  be 
much  plainer  if  we  have  a  distinct  hold  of  the  object 
before  us. 

At  few  points  do  we  see  more  distinctly  the  extent 
to  which  society,  in  its  organization,  rests  on  moral 
relations  than  in  connection  with  pauperism  'and  crime. 
Failures  at  one  point  spread  widely  through  society, 
and  the  obligations  incident  to  correction  search  out  all 
citizens.  We  have  learned  much  in  recent  years  in  the 
theory  of  the  subject,  and  gained  somewhat  in  the  appli- 
cation of  principles. 


EDUCATION.  351 


CHAPTER  IV. 
EDUCATION. 

§  1.  We  have  been  speaking  of  the  familiar  and  uni- 
versal duties  which  society,  acting  under  the  relations 
of  civil  law,  owes  to  itself;  of  the  manner  in  which  the 
state  performs  its  recognized  work.  We  have  empha- 
sized the  fact  that  the  protection  which  the  state  should 
extend  to  its  citizens  is  much  more  comprehensive  than 
it  is  usually  thought  to  be,  and  that,  under  the  rough 
provision  now  made  for  the  safety  of  property  and  per- 
son, there  is,  on  the  part  of  the  more  powerful,  a  con- 
stant disregard  of  the  equal  conditions  of  welfare  on 
the  part  of  the  less  powerful.  Unless  there  is  an 
assiduous  effort  to  constantly  renew  the  equality  of 
opportunities  in  society,  freedom  of  action  will  mean 
more  and  more  power  with  the  powerful,  more  and 
more  weakness  with  the  weak.  The  primary  watchful- 
ness of  society  must  be  directed  to  equitable  terms  of 
activity  between  its  members,  and  its  secondary  watch- 
fulness to  preserving  order  under  these  terms. 

A  chief  means  by  which  society  can  equalize  and 
renew  advantages  in  each  person,  each  class,  each  gen- 
eration, is  education.  The  question  of  popular  educa- 
tion thus  becomes,  among  the  questions  which  address 
themselves  to  the  state,  one  of  the  widest  interest.  It 
raises  these  inquiries:  the  right  of  the  state  to  educate 
its   youth,    the   reasons   for  the  exercise  of  the   right, 


352  civ  res. 

and  the  wisest  methods  in  its  use.  The  first  of  these 
inquiries  is  most  readily  answered  in  connection  with 
the  second.  If  there  are  urgent  reasons  why  the  state 
should  provide  liberally  for  education,  few  will  doubt 
its  right  to  do  that  which  is  for  its  own  highest  wel- 
fare. There  is  nothing,  either  by  way  of  power  or  of 
principle,  which  can  come  between  the  state  and  its 
performance  of  all  needed  services  to  itself.  The  power 
carries  with  it  the  duty  and  the  right.  The  opposite 
view  rests  on  the  theory  that  the  state  derives  its  power 
from  the  citizens,  a  theory  grounded  neither  in  philos- 
ophy nor  experience.  This  single  consideration  is  com- 
mended to  those  still  under  this  view.  If  the  state, 
pursuing  its  own  highest  development,  has  no  right  to 
tax  the  property  of  its  citizens  for  education,  how  can 
it,  seeking  safet}r,  conscript  its  citizens  in  its  defence  ? 
The  right  to  claim  the  lives  of  its  citizens  in  its  own 
defence  is  a  much  more  sweeping  right  than  the  right 
to  demand  a  portion  of  their  property  for  the  best 
construction  of  the  state.  The  relation  of  these  two  is 
the  more  significant,  as  the  one  rests  more  heavily  on 
the  poor  and  the  other  on  the  rich.  If  the  poor  man 
may  be  called  on  to  yield  his  sons  in  defence  of  the 
lives  and  property  of  the  rich,  the  rich  man  may  be 
called  on  to  give  of  his  means  for  the  education  of  the 
poor  man's  sons. 

Nor  are  the  ends  of  protection  and  construction  so 
separable  as  in  any  way  to  weaken  this  argument. 
They  are  ultimately  one.  The  state  is  safe  only  through 
growing  strength. 

The  reasons  for  general  education  are  ample ;  the 
objections  are  slight.     It  is  said  that  gratuitous  educa- 


EDUCATION.  3f)3 

tion  is  not  appreciated,  that  the  poor  neglect  what  is 
so  freely  bestowed  on  them.  Yet  this  method  of  mag- 
nificent, gratuitous  education  has  been  current  for  cen- 
turies, and  few  have  objected  to  it,  till  it  began  to 
reach  the  poor,  who  most  needed  it.  Not  a  rich  man 
pays  in  full  for  the  education  his  son  receives  in  any 
of  our  higher  institutions.  Giving  on  a  large-  scale 
is  the  foundation  of  them  all  —  gifts  which  are  con- 
stantly accruing  to  the  benefit  of  the  rich. 

Knowledge  is  easily  enhanced  in  the  eyes  of  one  pur- 
suing it  or  in  possession  of  it.  The  point  of  exertion 
is  in  the  acquisition,  and  is  quite  sufficient  to  maintain 
the  estimate  of  value.  A  high  esteem  of  knowledge 
inheres  in  knowledge  itself,  flows  constantly  forth  from 
those  who  in  any  measure  possess  it,  and  is  felt  as  a 
persuasive  to  action  by  those  furthest  removed  from  it. 
If  the  acquisition  of  knowledge  is  esteemed  lightly  by 
any,  it  will  more  frequently  be  by  the  children  of  the 
wealthy. 

It  is  objected  that  education  is  not  effective,  at  least 
not  so  effective  as  it  is  said  to  be,  in  securing  the  pub- 
lic welfare.  That  we  need  constantly  to  extend  educa- 
tion and  to  correct  it  in  purpose  and  method  is  true. 
Shabby,  inadequate,  and  ill-directed  work  is  attended 
with  the  same  failure  here  as  elsewhere.  "When,  in 
consequence  of  these  partial  failures,  wise  parents  no 
longer  think  it  desirable  to  educate  their  own  children, 
it  will  be  time  enough  for  the  state  to  neglect  its  more 
necessitous  children. 

Our  public  education  is  manifestly  effective  in  spite 
of  deficiencies.  Four  per  cent  of  our  population  is  illit- 
erate; it  furnishes  twenty-five  per  cent,  of  our  criminals. 


354  civics. 

Its  contribution  to  the  agencies  which  destroj*  society 
is  from  five  and  one-third  to  eight  times  greater  than 
its  numerical  proportion.1 

The  more  urgent  inquiry  pertains  to  the  method 
of  education.  A  hare  outline  must  suffice,  an  outline 
left  to  itself  for  its  justification.  Our  education  should 
tend  to  call  out  the  powers  of  children,  and  to  direct 
and  sustain  them.  It  should  put  the  child  in  the  best 
possession  of  itself,  in  the  most  favorable  relation  of 
service  to  the  community,  and  most  perfectly  under  the 
moral,  the  communal,  law.  To  do  this,  education  must 
be  universal,  —  extending  to  all  —  and  reach  in  its 
final  range  well  out  into  the  entire  field  of  knowledge. 
The  lower  and  the  higher  education  are  inseparable. 
Either,  as  a  social  power,  is  dwarfed  without  the  other. 
The  lower  becomes  jejune  and  barren  without  the  higher. 
The  higher  loses  a  large  share  of  its  ministration  with- 
out the  lower.  Education,  beginning  with  the  lowest 
social  stratum,  should  open  vital  and  stimulating  ways 
into  the  entire  field  of  truth,  aud  yield  to  every  one 
an  unobstructed  opportunity,  and  the  full  profit  of  his 
journey  as  far  as  he  makes  it.  Such  a  system  goes 
far  to  render  society  truly  organic.  Each  impulse  is 
expended  under  the  measure  of  its  own  power.  Men 
sink  or  rise  according  to  their  intellectual  buoyancy. 
There  are  no  breaks  in  knowledge.  The  knowledge 
that  is  above  percolates  downward  freely,  until  it 
reaches  the  lowest  stratum.  Intelligence  grows  strong 
or  fades  out,  but  is  nowhere  cut  short  by  impassable 
lines.  Society  thinks,  feels,  acts,  as  one  body.  Social 
problems  are  wrought  out  under  the  full  sweep  of  social 

1  "Win.  T.  Harris,  School  Review,  April,  1S93. 


ENDS   OF  EDUCATION.  355 

forces.  The  individual  can  move  freely  in  all  direc- 
tions. 

There  are  three  ends  in  education,  and  these  ends  are 
something  more  than  additional.  Each  later  one  gives 
new  force  to  the  previous  one.  In  our  public  education, 
we  have  attached  too  exclusive  importance  to  the  first. 
These  purposes  are,  as  indicated,  awakening  powers; 
giving  them  a  practical  direction;  and  bringing  them 
into  quiet  response  to  the  good  order  of  our  human 
household.  These  three  forms  may  be  designated  as  in- 
tellectual, industrial,  and  moral  training.  The  first  pur- 
pose we  have  pursued  with  considerable  distinctness  of 
apprehension.  Studies  and  methods  of  study  are  good 
in  the  degree  in  which  they  awaken  the  mind.  The 
second  purpose  is  far  more  obscure.  It  comes  to  unite 
mental  with  physical  development,  and  by  means  of  the 
two  to  increase  the  child's  mastery  of  the  world.  It  is 
not  easy  to  assign  directions  or  limits  to  this  form  of 
discipline.  It  goes  far  to  take  possession  of  the  child's 
future,  and  assign  him  a  definite  relation  to  society. 
We  desire,  at  once,  to  give  the  child  help  by  teaching 
that  practical  success  which  makes  life  and  knowledge 
most  fruitful,  and  yet  we  cannot  wisely  enter  on  methods 
which  prescribe  a  fixed  form  to  development.  Much 
must  be  left  to  the  child's  own  potency.  To  make  in- 
dustrial training  specific  is  to  hedge  in,  not  to  open  out, 
the  powers  with  which  we  are  dealing. 

The  third,  the  social  harmony,  lias  been  more  over- 
looked in  our  public  training  than  either  of  the  other 
two.  Yet  at  no  point  do  men  more  need  what  we  term 
training,  and  at  no  point  is  if  more  fit  that  society 
should  give  that  training  —  the  discipline  by  which  we 


356  civics. 

keep  step  with  each  other,  seeking  coir  own  safety  and 
the  safety  of  all.  This  is  enforcing  the  ethical  law,  the 
law  of  conduct,  as  evoked  from  our  own  constitution 
and  the  constitution  of  society.  This  law  should  be 
brought  habitually  to  the  pupil  in  the  forms  and  under 
the  influences  most  immediate  to  his  own  experience. 
So  wide  and  complicated  is  this  law  of  conduct,  so  inti- 
mately are  our  personal  and  social  dangers  and  successes 
associated  with  it,  that  an  education,  at  all  true  to  the 
facts  of  life,  will  find  increasing  occasion  to  give  it 
breadth  and  power  in  presentation.  History,  civics, 
literature,  religion,  are  permeated  through  and  through 
with  it,  and  are  light  or  dark  in  the  degree  in  which 
this  illumination  of  rational  relations  is  present  in  them. 
As  there  is  no  interpretation  of  life  deeper  than  the 
ethical  rendering  of  it,  so  there  is  no  spirit  of  discipline 
more  interior,  inspiring,  and  powerful  than  the  ethical 
temper,  imparting  force  and  harmony  to  life. 

Our  public  instruction  has  been  feeble  hitherto,  and 
must  remain  feeble  while  the  present  method  is  with 
us.  We  have  identified  morals  with  a  few  restrictive 
precepts,  always  nettlesome,  rarely  inspiring.  We  must 
handle  the  ethical  law  as  the  foundation  of  a  wide  and 
universal  life  in  ourselves  and  others  before  we  can  feel 
or  impart  its  power.  We  make,  for  example,  history 
immoral  by  turning  it  into  a  pageant  in  which  the  good 
and  the  bad  are  alike  lost  to  the  eye,  and  a  sensuous 
confusion  overtakes  us.  Fiction,  poetry,  history,  rarely 
reach  the  line  of  harmony  between  lower  and  higher 
impulses,  yet  they  throw  upon  us  the  whole  question  of 
life  —  of  the  true  and  powerful  forms  of  life.  The  criti- 
cism of  personal  characteristics,  of  social  structure,  and 


TRAINING    IN    MORALS.  357 


the  flow  of  events,  is  necessarily  moral.  Instruction  in 
history,  literature,  philosophy,  cannot  be  penetrative 
without  being  in  that  degree  moral. 

.Moreover,  a  social  life,  limited,  indeed,  but  most  real, 
is  daily  formed  directly  under  the  hand  of  the  teacher, 
with  its  own  object  lessons  and  principles  of  well-being. 
The  instruction  which  is  most  effective  must  be  free, 
since  it  aims  to  evoke  living  impulses  in  living  spirits. 
Instruction  that  is  peremptory,  full  of  imposition,  seeks 
an  inferior  end,  and  imposes  burdens  very  likely  to  be 
cast  off  with  good-will  when  the  opportunity  conies. 
Sound  education  is  a  movable  equilibrium  between  the 
clear,  stimulating  voice  that  leaves  all  truth  with  those 
addressed,  and  the  cogent  authority,  which  of  right 
belongs  to  that   which  is   good. 

§  2.  It. is  said  that  we  cannot  teach  morals,  they  in- 
volve so  much  sentiment,  and  rest  so  much  on  the  force 
of  habit.  This  is  so  far  true  that  we  cannot  expect  to 
separate  sound  conduct  from  the  current  spiritual  con- 
victions which  enclose  our  lives,  and  are  the  avenues  to 
the  most  familiar  and  constant  impressions.  Whatever 
we  may  think  of  religious  truth,  or  of  the  various  forms 
of  faith  in  which  it  finds  expression,  it  is  impossible  for 
us  to  overlook  their  immense  influence,  or  to  regard  them 
as  the  malign  producl  of  superstition  and  tyranny  —  as 
impossible  as  it  would  be  to  refer  civil  government  tc 
the  willingness  of  the  few  to  dictate  the  forms  of  life 
to  the  many.  Religion  has  been  a  powerful  organic 
force  that  has  wroughl  side  by  side  with  civic  law  in 
combining  and  guiding  men.1  So  long  as  religion  pos- 
sessed   physical    authority,    the    only    possible    harmony 

i  "  Social  Evolution."  B.  Kidd. 


358  civics. 

between  it  and  the  state,  embracing  the  same  subjects, 
was  that  of  union  and  mutual  support. 

As  religion  came  to  be  recognized  as  spiritual  in  its 
character,  demanding  freedom  of  belief  and  action,  and 
submitting  itself  wholly  to  the  liberty  of  the  individual, 
it  became  evident  that  the  state,  by  involving  faith  in 
its  coercive  relations,  must  necessarily  injure  it.  The 
two  forms  of  authority  ceased  to  run  parallel.  Physical 
force  marred  spiritual  influence.  Any  imposition,  in 
the  region  of  belief,  became  tyranny.  The  state  could 
no  longer  strengthen  religion  in  its  inner  hold  on  the 
mind.  Religion  could  help  the  state  only  by  being  left 
to  do  its  own  vivifying  work  by  itself. 

Many  have  looked  upon  this  separation,  this  breaking 
up  of  a  contract  of  coercion,  as  if  it  were  an  ultimate 
and  absolute  divorce  of  these  two  necessary  and  univer- 
sal forms  of  action  from  each  other.  It  is  rather  the 
substitution  of  a  higher,  freer  interaction  for  one  lower 
and  more  constrained.  Religion  can  best  help  the  state, 
being  left  to  its  own  liberty. 

The  aid  it  renders  is  associated  with  education,  Avith 
calling  out  and  supporting  that  sense  of  perfect  order  in 
conduct  which  is  the  substance  of  all  harmony  between 
man  and  man.  In  a  country  in  which  education  is 
chiefly  public,  this  question  of  the  connection  of  social 
impulses  and  religious  ones  becomes  active  and  vital. 
There  is  a  double  bigotry  from  which  we  suffer  in  edu- 
cation, the  bigotry  which  identifies  religion  with  certain 
dogmas,  and  the  bigotry  which  insists-  on  the  absolute 
exclusion  of  all  religious  thought.  The  tyranny  of  the 
last  assertion  is  of  the  same  order  as  that  of  the  first 
assertion,  with  the  added  inconvenience  that  it  claims 


EDUCATION  AND   RELIGION.  859 

an  absolute  and  universal  concession  to  one  of  the  smaller 
of  religious  factions. 

Moral  education,  the  enforcement  of  those  laws  of 
conduct  which  build  men  together  in  complete  recogni- 
tion of  their  mutual  rights,  is,  in  a  free  government, 
the  summation  of  all  training.  Moral  impulses,  as 
potent  forces  in  society,  are  inseparable  from  spiritual 
impulses.  The  religious  life  embodies  the  same  prin- 
ciples as  the  moral  life,  but  embodies  them  in  a  more 
personal  form.  It  matters  little  what  force  a  few  minds 
can  give  to  abstract  ideas.  Men  have  been  trained  in 
their  duties  in  the  entire  course  of  history  in  connection 
with  religious  sentiments.  Here  the  streams  of  life  are 
flowing.  We  cannot  now  turn  them  back  on  themselves, 
or  send  them  elsewhere.  We  can  no  more  divide  moral 
and  spiritual  impulses  than  we  can  separate  the  waters 
of  rivers  that  have  once  united. 

It  will  he  an  unusual  thing  that  a  teacher  will  possess 
effective  ethical  ideas  dissociated  from  spiritual  ones  ; 
a  rarer  thing  that  children,  from  families  and  communi- 
ties permeated  with  religious  opinion,  will  carry  with 
them  for  long  the  force  of  an  unfamiliar  method.  Con- 
ventional life  is  full  of  faith.  Faith  holds  in  solution 
much  the  larger  share  of  its  ethical  impulses.  It  is  vain 
to  suppose  that  a  public  school  system,  in  itself  inter- 
mittent and  remote,  can  exert  a  controlling  influence, 
when  it  neglects  the  feelings  most  familiar  and  habitual 
among  men.  and  replaces  them  by  ideas  above  all  diffi- 
cult of  enforcement.  This  is  flaunting  theory  in  the 
face  of  the  world's  experience. 

A  complete  ethical  law,  implanted  in  the  minds  of 
men  and  the  framework  of  society,  is  the  most  forcible 


860  civics. 

possible  revelation  of  God,  and  the  sense  of  his  over- 
ruling thought  is  the  best  possible  support  of  this  law. 
Our  education,  any  education,  is  entitled  to  the  highest 
spiritual  notions  which  the  race  has  reached  in  the 
weary  travel  of  centuries.  To  put  negations,  or  mere 
nothings,  where  evolution  has  placed  our  most  control- 
ling and  consoling  beliefs,  is  to  emasculate  all  moral  dis- 
cipline. If  we  ought  not  to  be  constrained  by  any  one 
statement  of  religious  truth,  still  less  should  we  be 
bound  by  a  barren  denial  of  all  statements.  Ethical 
truth  lies,  in  most  minds,  as  an  inseparable  part  of  a 
spiritual  system,  and  in  this  way  they  must  be  allowed 
to  handle  it. 

The  public  teacher  should  be  left  to  carry  over  to  his 
pupils  wider  principles  and  better  impulses  through  all 
the  open  ways  which  lie  between  therm,  impulses  sup- 
ported by  sentiments  which  are  their,  common  posses- 
sion. This  is  liberty,  and  liberty  made  effective  in  the 
common  service.  Such  instruction  separates  itself  from 
the  enforcement  of  religious  dogmas  and  religious  rites. 
It  is  in  no  way  difficult  to  distinguish  between  them. 
Nor  are  the  slight  errors  by  which  one  gives  to  in- 
struction occasionally  the  stringency  of  a  narrow  belief 
in  any  way  important,  save  as  men  choose  to  find  in 
them  occasions  of  quarrel.  The  public  school  is  too 
uncongenial  to  religious  dogma  to  make  that  dogma  in 
any  degree  dangerous.  On  the  other  hand,  it  habitually 
suffers  from  methods  too  unfamiliar  and  impersonal 
to  lay  hold  of  the  lives  of  children. 

The  very  highest  function  of  education,  pre-eminently 
of  public  education  looking  toward  good  citizenship,  is 
a  vital    exposition   of   the    laws  of   conduct   by  which 


EDUCATION  AND   RELIGION.  361 

human  life  is  built  up  and  built  together  in  strength. 
The  successes  secured  in  other  directions  are,  in  a  large 
measure,  lost  if  they  are  not  accompanied  with  success 
in  this  direction.  In  aiming  at  character,  conduct,  the 
soundness  of  our  communal  life,  tha..  teacher  should^ 
have  the  liberty  of  the  entire  spiritual  world,  the  world 
under  consideration  ;  should  have  a  right  to  assume  the 
fundamental  convictions  which  are  involved,  for  the 
mass  of  men,  in  the  moral  order  of  the  world,  convic- 
tions whose  denial  by  the  few  is  oftentimes  more  verbal 
than  real. 

^Ve  may  be  quite  sure  that  we  shall  never  draw  power 
except  from  the  sources  of  power,  and  that  these  sources 
are  in  the  deeper,  wider  thoughts  of  men.  We  plead  for 
a  liberty  which  entitles  men  to  a  use  of  their  resources, 
not  for  that  semblance  of  liberty  which  robs  them  all 
equally  of  their  influence. 

"While  the  state  remains  separate  from  all  forms  of 
faith,  leaving  them,  one  and  all,  to  the  development  of 
their  inherent  tendencies,  this  attitude  does  not  compel 
the  state  to  be  stupidly  unobservant  of  the  public  wel- 
fare, as  it  may  be  associated  with  religious  belief.  Its 
wisdom  does  not  consist  in  knowing  nothing,  and  seeing 
nothing,  on  this  most  weighty  side  of  life.  Its  aim  is 
to  preserve  this  life,  as  all  life,  by  granting  it  liberty. 
This  it  cannot  do  in  a  blind  way.  running  against  it  and 
over  it  whenever  it.  chances  on  it  in  its  path.  The  state 
must  recognize  the  scope  and  organic  force  of  religion, 
withholding  its  hand  from  it,  not  that  it  may  do  less, 
but  do  more,  in  its  own  spiritual  method  in  building 
society.  No  impoverished  policy  of  neglect  will  enable 
the  state  to  do  its  work  well.      The  principle  that  settles 


362  CIVICS. 

all  questions  with  it  must  be  the  fullest,  highest  devel- 
opment of  the  conjoint  life. 

§  3.  In  speaking  of  the  manner  in  which  the  state 
renders  its  duties,  the  most  immediate  of  them  being 
the  safety  of  all,  mention  was  made  of  external  protec- 
tion. This  duty  has  long  threatened,  in  its  perform- 
ance, to  cripple  and  crush  the  very  interests  in  behalf 
of  which  it  is  rendered.  In  most  civilized  nations,  men 
are  laboring  hard  in  peace  to  secure  the  resources  of 
war,  finding  no  goal  of  rest  under  the  ever-growing 
demand.  War  does  not  bring  safety  to  the  pursuits  of 
peace,  but  peace  loses  a  large  share  of  its  blessings  in  a 
constant  preparation  for  war.  The  one  great  burden 
resting  on  men  and  means  to-day  in  Europe  is  the  bur- 
den of  actual  or  possible  war.  No  other  fact  so  directly 
and  extensively  interferes  with  the  public  welfare.  The 
evil  has  assumed  that  complicated  and  irrational  form 
in  which  all  unite  in  magnifying  it,  and  none  seem  able 
to  abate  it. 

The  correction  seems  to  lie  in  a  transfer  of  political 
power  from  the  few  to  the  many.  Those  who  now  have 
the  most  influence  in  provoking  war  bear  the  smaller 
share  of  its  burdens  ;  those  to  whom  it  is  an  extreme 
and  unmitigated  evil  have  little  to  do  in  ordering  it. 
As  long  as  men  by  the  million  can  be  led  into  war  and 
trampled  under  foot  by  it,  with  slight  reference  to  their 
own  interests,  war  is  likely  to  retain  its  hold.  A  large 
and  influential  class  find  their  honor  and  their  interest 
in  it,  and  maintain  the  sentiments  on  which  it  rests. 
Those  who  drive  men  into  battle,  and  those  who  are 
driven  into  battle,  have  no  parity  of  rights,  of  gains  and 
losses.     When  men  shall  know  their  own  thoughts,  and 


EDUCATION  AND    WAR.  363 

be  able  to  make  those  thoughts  effective,  war,  as  against 
the  interests  of  .the  mass  of  men,  will  relax  its  grasp. 
The  simply  thrifty,  happy  citizen  has  little  or  no  incen- 
tive to  war;  he  has  great  occasion  to  look  upon  it  with 
abhorrence.  A  growth  in  prosperity  of  the  laboring 
classes  means  the  end  of  war,  both  because  their  growth 
is  checked  by  Avar,  and  because  the  better  sentiments 
springing  up  between  man  and  man  are  repugnant  to  it. 
As  lung  as  there  is  tyranny  within  the  state,  states  are 
likely  to  be  belligerent  to  each  other.  The  sense  of  jus- 
tice is  a  far  better  defence  than  accumulated  force. 
Wide  industrial  and  social  training  are  the  ultimate 
terms  of  safety. 


364  civics. 


CHAPTER  V. 

THE    ENFORCEMENT    OP    NEW    DUTIES    BETWEEN 

CITIZENS. 

§  1.  A  society  is  in  a  constant  process  of  evolution. 
New  relations,  and  with  them  new  rights  and  new  duties, 
take  the  foreground.  Social  adjustments  cannot  remain 
for  very  long  the  same.  As  soon  as  one  answer  is  made, 
the  interrogatory  takes  on  another  form.  In  winning 
the  English  Constitution,  a  long  series  of  contentions  lay 
between  tyranny  and  liberty  ;  and  when  a  relatively  free 
government  was  won,  a  like  series  of  changes  were  found 
necessary  in  its  adjustment  to  social  life. 

Powei*,  ever  ready  to  become  tyranny,  is  constantly 
concentrating  at  new  points,  and  calls  for  fresh  methods 
of  limitation  and  dispersion.  The  power  which  accumu- 
lates,, under  free  institutions,  in  single  persons,  or  classes, 
or  modes  of  procedure,  is  even  more  dangerous  than  the 
monopolies  a  monarch  may  devise.  They  escape  obser- 
vation, or  are  regarded  as  necessary  incidents  of  the 
rights  of  all,  the  inevitable  results  of  liberty.  That 
eternal  vigilance  is  the  price  of  liberty  is  in  no  direction 
more  true  than  in  dealing  with  the  results  of  liberty  it- 
self--than  in  the  readjustments  by  which  these  fresh 
powers  are  shaped  to  each  other.  We  must  not  be  sat- 
isfied with  an  even  start  in  the  race  ;  in  every  stage  of 
it  fair  relations  must  be  maintained,  and  at  every  re- 
newal of  it  equal  relations  must  be  restored.  We  do 
not  run  once  for  all. 


CORPORA  TIO  NS:  3<  15 

§  2.  That  which,  especially  distinguishes  our  time 
has  been  the  concentration  of  power  in  the  industrial 
world,  the  independence  of  the  employer,  the  depen- 
dence of  the  employee.  The  most  obnoxious  form  of 
what  may  well  enough  be  termed  tyranny  is  offered  by 
corporations,  themselves  the  creations  of  law.  The  de- 
mand is  the  stronger,  therefore,  that  the  state  which  con- 
fers these  anomalous  powers  should  also  control  them. 

States,  like  England,  which  are  watchful  of  the  safety 
of  their  citizens,  have  found  occasion  for  an  ever-grow- 
ing series  of  laws  designed  to  protect  the  employee  from 
the  encroachments  incident  to  the  new  and  more  power- 
ful forms  of  industry.  The  kinds  of  labor  admissible 
for  women  and  children,  the  schooling  of  children,  the 
hours  of  labor,  the  conditions  of  safety  and  health,  in- 
surance against  accident,  methods  of  payment  of  wages, 
inspection  as  of  savings-banks,  provision  for  old  age,  are 
examples  of  the  points  that  have  come  under  consider- 
ation. The  fact  is  recognized  that  not  only  does  personal 
liberty  not  suffice  to  secure  general  personal  safety  under 
the  modern  conditions  of  society,  but  that  it  is  less 
and  less  able  to  do  so.  Protection  is  thrown  over  those 
most  able  to  manage  their  own  affairs.  Steam  boilers  are 
inspected,  the  manner  of  running  railroad  trains  is  deter- 
mined, the  character  of  crossings,  the  method  of  heating 
cars,  the  material  and  construction  of  buildings,  the 
purity  of  food,  the  public  health,  the  diseases  of  cattle, 
are  taken  under  regulation.  The  public  has  ceased  to 
be  distrustful  of  intervention.  As  the  citizen,  in  the 
ever-increasing  complexity  of  life,  is  unable  to  care  for 
himself,  the  stale  strives  to  care  for  him. 

§  o.    With  this  growt  h  in  the  forms  of  proteci  ion.  there 


366  civics. 

has  sprung  up,  though  more  slowly,  a  sense  of  the  need 
of  greater  restraint  laid  on  individual  and  corporate 
power,  the  sources  of  trespass.  The  industrial  world, 
instead  of  becoming  more  safe  and  broadly  beneficent 
by  virtue  of  the  immense  increase  of  productive  power, 
has  become  more  dangerous.  Violent  fluctuations  take 
place  which  result  in  the  loss  of  the  means  of  subsis- 
tence to  many  workmen.  Wage-earners  are  suddenly 
thrown  out  of  employment  in  a  manner  wholly  unaf- 
fected by  any  diligence  or  want  of  diligence,  or  previs- 
ion or  want  of  prevision,  of  their  own.  They  fall  as 
readily  as  blasted  fruit  from  a  wind-beaten  tree.  In 
the  winter  of  1893  and  1894,  the  police  census  re- 
ported 46,859  unemployed  in  Philadelphia.  The  public 
buildings  in  Chicago  were  crowded  at  night  with  the 
destitute,  as  by  the  wounded  after  a  great  battle.  Every- 
where a  heavy  wave  of  disaster  broke  over  the  land, 
not  from  physical,  but  from  economic  and  social,  causes. 
Such  facts  invite  attention  because  of  their  increasing 
frequency  and  increasing  magnitude ;  because  they  are 
associated  with  an  ever-growing  luxury  on  the  part  of 
those  who  have  the  guidance  of  the  industrial  world ; 
because  thev  seem  more  and  more  uncontrollable  with 
every  step  of  concentration  ;  because  the  panics  —  as 
was  the  case  in  the  above  example  —  of  which  these 
disasters  are  the  result,  are  often  occasioned  by  legisla- 
tion ;  because  the  doctrine  of  personal  liberty,  urged  as 
a  constructive  principle,  makes  chiefly  for  the  increased 
influence  of  those  from  whose  power  we  are  already 
suffering;  and  because  tyranny  is  just  as  possible  under 
unrestrained  commercial  privilege  as  under  civil  or 
military    authority.      While    we    must    admit    that    the 


UA1LWATS.  361 


remedies  of  these  extended  evils  are  by  no  means 
obvious,  we  must  also  remember  that  a  large  share  of 
our  successes  are  won  by  tentative  efforts,  associated 
at  first  with  complete  or  partial  failure.  The  one 
position  forever  untenable  is  that  evils  are  to  be  left 
to  themselves,  that  they  will  eliminate  themselves  with- 
out our  correction. 

On  this  movement  of  control  the  public  has  entered, 
though  in  a  distrustful  and  timid  way.  If  the  govern- 
ment of  forces  so  masterful  as  those  which  now  possess 
the  industrial  world  is  to  be  undertaken,  it  must  be  in  a 
determined  spirit.  Commissions  of  various  kinds  have 
been  established  to  which  the  public  has  looked  for 
relief, — bank  commissions,  insurance  commissions,  rail- 
road commissions. 

Railroad  commissions  are  the  most  notable,  and 
though  not  without  success,  as  in  Massachusetts,  have 
more  often  been  disappointing.  It  has  been,  for  the 
most  part,  damming  the  Nile  with  bulrushes.  Unless 
a  definite,  intelligent,  and  controlling  public  sentiment 
supports  these  commissions,  they  are  able  to  accomplish 
but  little.  More  frequently  they  have  quietly  fallen 
into  the  hands  of  the  railroads. 

§4.  The  most  prominent  and  pushing  of  the  social 
problems  raised  by  this  sudden  extension  of  commercial 
processes  is  that  of  railroads.  They  invite  attention 
because  of.  the  magnitude  of  the  interests  which  they 
themselves  embrace.  In  1893,  there  were  176,461  miles 
of  railroad  in  the  United  States,  giving  direct  employ- 
ment to  873,602  men.  and  costing  some  ten  billions  of 
dollars.  The  men  employed  in  railroads  are  very  much 
separated  from  the  community  at  large.     Their  mode 


368  CIVICS. 

of  life  is  peculiar  and  exacting,  and  they  easily  become 
a  class  governed  by  motives  confined  to  themselves. 
They  do  not  receive  the  sympathy  they  ought  in  their 
needless  exposure  to  danger,  and  their  own  sympathies 
are  correspondingly  narrowed.  In  1891  the  railroads  of 
Iowa  employed  27,583  men,  and  paid  in  wages  $16,175,- 
400.  Questions  involving  the  interests  of  railroads 
have  been  very  prominent  in  the  politics  of  that  State, 
and  the  railroads  have  thus  become  a  very  important 
factor  in  its  government.  A  powerful  and  solid  influ- 
ence is  liable  to  be  thrown  at  any  moment  into  the 
political  scales  in  favor  of  a  special  interest,  narrowly 
regarded. 

Railroads  have  also  an  extended  and  even  control- 
ling influence  on  many  forms  of  production.  In  the 
great  extension  of  commerce,  due  to  the  increase  and 
concentration  of  manufacture,  and  the  surprising  de- 
velopment of  the  means  of  transportation,  a  very  con- 
siderable share  of  values  is  the  product  of  freights. 
One-tenth  of  the  total  value  is  referred  to  this  source.1 
Every  business  in  which  the  freights  involved  in  raw 
material  or  in  finished  products  are  at  all  considerable 
becomes  dependent  on  railroads,  and  can  frequently  be 
brought  under  their  control,  or  bring  them  under  its 
control.  One  of  the  most  formidable  and  most  censura- 
ble of  monopolies,  the  Standard  Oil  Company,  was  built 
up  in  connection  with  railroads.  Railroads  have  under- 
taken to  determine  the  fortunes  of  great  cities  ;  to  say 
that,  for  purposes  of  commerce,  Minneapolis  and  St. 
Paul  should  be  as  near  to  Chicago  as  to  Duluth.2 

1  " Monopolies  and  the  People,"  ('.  W.  Baker,  p.  43. 
*  "The  Railway  Problem, "  A.  B.  Stickney,  p.  98. 


RAILWAYS.  309 

The  unit  of  measurement  in  freights  is  one  ton  carried 
one  mile.  Prosperous  roads,  like  the  Pennsylvania  Pail- 
road,  have  reduced  their  charge  to  less  than  one-half 
cent,  while  the  average  cost  is  about  one  cent.  Freight 
has  been  carried  from  Minneapolis  to  Chicago  for  three 
and  one-half  mills,  hardly  more  than  one-third  the 
cost ;  and  the  loss  thus  suffered  has  been  transferred  to 
other  freights.1  How  perfectly  the  railroads  govern  all 
coarser  forms  of  production  is  seen  in  the  fact  that  the 
produce  of  five  acres  of  wheat  can  be  transferred  from 
Chicago  to  London  for  a  sum  less  than  is  required  to 
manure  one  acre  in  England ;  and  that  the  supply  of 
food  for  one  person  one  year  can  be  carried  one  thousand 
miles  for  one  day's  labor.  There  are  no  forces,  in  mod- 
ern industrial  life,  that  build  up  and  pull  down  various 
forms  of  production  in  so  secret  and  inevitable  a  way  as 
do  railroads.  Not  to  know  what  the  railroads  are  doing, 
is  not  to  know  on  what  one's  daily  living  depends.  The 
community  cannot  do  otherwise  than  direct  a  most  in- 
terested attention  to  railroads;  and  this  attention  is 
repeatedly  forced  upon  it  by  some  great  disturbance  in 
production,  or  outbreak  of  violence  incident  to  their 
action.  Railroads  do  not,  perhaps  cannot,  under  exist- 
ing circumstances,  keep  the  peace.  If  we  leave  railroads 
under  the  precedents  already  established  by  their  own 
enterprise  simply,  we  may  expect  every  form  and  meas- 
ure of  personal  injury;  if  with  courage  and  wisdom  we 
enter  on  their  control,  we  may  hope  that  the  magnifi- 
cent productive  power  they  represent  may  submit  itself 
to  the  public  welfare. 

Railroads  demand  this  more  effective  attention,  be- 

i  "The  Railway  Problem,"  A.  B.  Stickney,  pp.  189,  112. 


870  civics. 

cause  the  automatic  forces  we  have  been  wont  to  rely 
on  for  their  regulation  have  signally  failed.  Economists 
have  looked  to  competition  to  correct  exaction.  Com- 
petition almost  completely  miscarries  in  railroads.  It 
is  often  inoperative,  and  often  productive  of  results  the 
exact  opposite  of  those  desired.  Natural  water-ways, 
open  to  all  and  open  through  the  entire  year,  do  not  so 
much  compete  with  railroads  as  supersede  them  in  a 
large  class  of  freights.  If  navigation  is  suspended  dur- 
ing any  considerable  portion  of  the  year,  a  heavy  fluc- 
tuation of  freights  is  occasioned.  Canals,  in  a  few 
instances,  may  give  rise  to  wholesome  competition ;  but 
they  often,  as  in  England,  fall  into  the  hands  of  rail- 
roads, or  are  superseded  by  them,  or,  as  in  the  case  of 
the  Erie  Canal,  settle  down  to  slow,  coarse  freight  with- 
out toll.  Kailroads  can  never  advantageously  compete 
with  each  other  in  rendering  the  same  service  to  the 
same  territory.  Parallel  roads  involve  superfluous  ex- 
penditure, both  in  construction  and  in  use,  and  must 
either  be  run  at  a  loss,  or  make  their  charges  unneces- 
sarily high  to  meet  the  double  outlay.  They  are  not 
infrequently  built  with  the  intention  of  forcing  a  com- 
promise, and,  Avhether  so  built  or  not,  are  quite  sure  to 
come  under  one  management,  which  henceforth  does  its 
work  at  a  disadvantage.  The  very  nature  of  the  cir- 
cumstances makes  railroads,  in  local  service,  natural 
monopolies. 

Terminal  stations,  stations  which  are  served  by  two 
or  more  systems  of  railroads  in  connection  with  the  same 
traffic,  are  relatively  few ;  and  the  competition  to  which 
they  give  rise  is  of  so  unwholesome  a  nature  as  to  be 
the    constant    occasion   of    combination.      Freights    are 


UAILWATS.  371 

forced  below  the  paying  point,  and  railroads  recoup  their 
losses  by  higher  local  charges.  Competing  roads  by  no 
means  control  their  own  action.  They  drift  into  condi- 
tions in  which  they  are  at  the  mercy  of  freight  agents, 
and  accept,  in  a  desperate,  blind  way,  the  secret  and  in- 
adequate terms  thatanay  be  offered  them.  They  become 
the  sport  of  circumstances,  ruinous  to  themselves  and 
ruinous  to  all  firm,  equal  production.  The  evil  becomes 
so  great  as  to  conquer  those  who  have  created  it.  A 
dangerous  element  of  risk  is  admitted  into  business 
which  very  few  can  manage  to  their  profit.  As,  there- 
fore, railroads  come  under  no  adequate  economic  laws, 
and  themselves  create  most  perplexing  and  tyrannical 
conditions  of  production,  they  call  for  a  correction  quite 
above  and  beyond  that  of  their  own  management. 

Incident  to  this  utterly  inefficacious  and  violent  com- 
petition, there  arises  a  speculative  and  irresponsible 
temper  that  puts  railroad  management  at  war  with  all 
honest  methods.  One  so  well  entitled  to  speech  as 
Charles  F.  Adams  affirms  the  utter  untrustworthiness 
of  railroad  managers  in  their  relation  to  each  other  and 
to  different  customers.  They  cannot  let  their  left  hand 
know  what  their  right  hand  does,  as  the  work  of  the 
two  collated  would  be  self-destructive.  They  are  ready 
to  build  up  sueh  obnoxious  monopolies  as  the  Standard 
Oil  Company,  till  they  themselves  become  its  slaves;  or 
enter  into  sueh  oppressive  combinations  as  that  con- 
nected with  Spring  Valley,  or  subject  themselves  to  the 
secret  terms  which  some  unscrupulous  manager  may 
offer  them.1  They  are  thus  swept-  in  and  out,  up  and 
down.   I  lie  helpless  waifs  of  a  destructive  tide. 

1  "  Strike  of  Millionaires  against  Miners, "  H.  D.  Lloyd. 


372  CIVICS. 

Satisfactory  business  methods  become  more  and  more 
impossible,  and  endless,  shifting,  illicit  devices  take  their 
place.  A  speculative  temper,  ruinous  to  production, 
prevails,  combinations  multiply,  and  railroads  bear  with 
them  a  contagion  of  dishonesty. 

A  direction  in  which  this  temper  finds  expression  is 
in  the  extension  of  railroad  systems  by  construction  and 
absorption.  This  combination,  in  itself  considered,  is  a 
desirable  result.  Railroads  can  be  run  more  cheaply 
and  effectively  in  systems.  It  would  be  a  great  gain  if 
all  the  roads  in  the  United  States  were  constructed  and 
run  in  reference  to  each  other.  Railroads  would  thereby 
be  better  suited,  in  their  extension,  to  the  demands  of 
commerce,  and  effort  that  is  now  wasted  in  injurious 
competition  could  be  directed  to  better  service.  In 
spite,  therefore,  of  the  evils  which  have  attended  on 
consolidation,  the  consolidation  itself  has  been  a  true 
productive  tendency.  Eighty  per  cent  of  the  railroads 
of  the  United  States  are  included  in  systems  of  500 
miles  or  more.  The  larger  systems  include  some 
12,000  miles.1  But  our  railroads  are  so  managed  that 
they  cannot  do  good  without  at  the  same  time  doing 
notable  mischief.  The  Vanderbilt  system  has  been 
built  up  and  handled  with  much  more  than  average 
justice  and  consideration  ;  yet  the  Harlem  Road  was 
acquired  by  a  corner  in  stocks,  a  form  of  gambling  as 
much  more  debauching  than  other  forms  as  it  is  more 
extended  and  tempting.  The  career  of  J.  Gould  bore 
to  legitimate  business  much  the  same  relation  as  did  the 
holding-up  of  stages  on  the  plain  to  gold  production. 

The  public  may  also  assert  itself  in  connection  with 

1  "  Monopolies  and  the  People,"  p.  45,  167. 


RAILWAYS.  373 

railroads  because  of  the  part  it  lias  taken  in  their 
construction.  The  contributions  of  individuals,  towns, 
cities,  and  the  general  government  to  railroads,  especial- 
ly in  their  earlier  history,  has  been  very  great.  Many 
towns  are  still  bearing  the  burdens  thus  incurred.  Two 
hundred  and  fifty  millions  of  acres,  and  one  hundred 
and  eighty-five  millions  of  municipal  bonds,  have  been 
granted  for  their  construction.1  The  Union  Pacific  Rail- 
road is  bankrupt  in  reference  to  its  obligations  to  the 
United  States,  yet  individuals  have  made  great  fortunes 
in  connection  with  it.  This  has  been  by  no  means  an 
unusual  experience  in  railroading.  The  fortunes  of 
those  who  loan  money  and  hold  stock  are  quite  other 
than  the  fortunes  of  those  who  handle  them.2 

The  public  has  also  granted  these  roads  a  valuable 
franchise.  The  state  habilitates  each  road,  to  the  extent 
of  securing  a  right  of  way,  witli  its  own  sovereign  au- 
thority ;  it  should,  therefore,  be  watchful  as  to  the  use 
made  of  this  power,  and  feel  itself  bound  to  the  amplest 
protection  of  the  public  in  thus  loaning  its  own  exclu- 
sive right. 

In  defending  the  intervention  of  the  public,  it  has 
been  also  urged,  that  railroads  are  public  carriers,  anil 
that  common  law,  as  the  result  of  accumulated  expe- 
rience, lias  imposed,  in  behalf  of  the  general  welfare, 
many  restrictions  on  this  form  of  service.  The  case  is 
much  stronger  than  this  plea  implies.  The  profits  of  a 
railroad  are  not  secured  on  a  public  road,  open  to  the 
occupation  of  all,  but  on  a  private  way,  granted  by  the 
public  to  each  company  for  its  exclusive  use,  and  more 

1  "American  Kconomic  Association,"  vol.  i.  p.  68. 

2  "Monopolies  and  the  People,"  p.  1)4. 


374  civics. 

or  less  inconsistent  with  similar  grants  to  other  persons. 
The  risks  and  inconveniences  which  the  public  may  suf- 
fer from  this  form  of  traffic  are  not  slight  and  avoida- 
ble, like  those  which  gave  rise  to  the  law  of  carriers,  but 
exceedingly  great,  and  beyond  redress.  A  disuse  of  its 
rights  by  the  state,  for  a  considerable  period,  so  blinds 
business  men  that  they  regard  these  rights  as  non-exis- 
tent. They  come  to  think  that  railways  are  entitled  to 
the  same  exemptions  as  private  undertakings.  When 
the  State  of  Wisconsin  ventured  to  put  restrictions  on 
the  railroads  of  the  State,  Alexander  Mitchell,  in  behalf 
of  the  Chicago,  Milwaukee,  and  St.  Paul  Eailroad,  an- 
nounced to  the  governor  of  the  State  in  a  public  letter, 
his  determination  to  disregard  them.1  Judge  Ryan,  in 
considering  these  laws,  claimed,  with  a  clear  comprehen- 
sion of  the  case,  that  the  common  law  remedies  were 
wholly  inadequate  to  meet  the  dangers  involved  in  rail- 
ways, and  that  other  principles  and  methods  commensu- 
rate with  the  exigency  should  be  adopted.2  The  railroad 
brings  us  to  a  turning-point  in  civilization  at  which 
there  must  be  a  new  assertion  of  power  or  a  fatal  loss 
of  liberty. 

One  more  reason  why  railroads,  with  all  their  benef- 
icence, may  easily  become  social  forces  inimical  to  the 
public,  is  found  in  their  relation  to  legislation.  They 
are  the  offspring  of  legislation,  and  they  are  not  easily 
weaned  from  it.  "  The  fortunes  which  have  been  made 
are  seen  to  have  been  the  result  of  'dealings  in  stocks 
and  in  titles,  the  consequences  of  which,  if  involving 
wrong,  are  rightly  charged   against  the  lax  legislation 

1  "  The  Railway  Problem,"  p.  100. 
?  Ibid,  i>.207. 


RAILWAYS.  375 

which  has  made  such  operations  possible." 1  Railroads 
are  an  influential,  and  frequently  a  corrupting,  factor  in 
our  state  legislatures.  They  secure  and  prevent  legis- 
lation with  single  reference  to  their  own  interests.  In 
some  of  the  States,  as  in  Pennsylvania,  this  influence  is 
controlling.  Everywhere  they  are  the  most  permanent 
and  important  part  of  the  lobby.  They  anticipate  every 
legislative  measure  designed  to  restore  the  economic  and 
social  balance.  The  public  cannot,  if  it  wished,  ignore 
them,  for  they  are  constantly  in  the  public  path.  A 
just,  open,  adequate  adjustment  of  rights  and  obliga- 
tions is  all  that  remains  to  it.  The  alternative  is  end- 
less indirection,  injury,  and  corruption.  Even  in  our 
courts  of  justice,  the  power  and  wealth  of  these  corpo- 
rations so  overshadow  the  law,  that  the  weak  hardly 
dare  seek  redress.  The  manner  in  which  we  deal  with 
this  most  novel  and  dangerous  concentration  of  power, 
which  we  ourselves  have  created,  will  determine  our 
success  in  dealing  with  those  inferior  corporations  which 
are  the  giants  of  our  day. 

§  5.  The  injuries  to  which  railroads  have  given  rise, 
are  first,  in  their  treatment  of  stockholders,  second,  in 
their  treatment  of  the  public,  and  third,  in  their  treat- 
ment of  employees.  Managers  have  taken  the  railroads 
to  themselves,  and  stockholders  have  been  almost  as 
much  at  their  mercy  as  the  public.  Managers  have 
frequently  separated  themselves  from  stockholders  and 
disregarded  their  obligations  to  them.  The  earlier 
methods  of  construction  favored  this  result;  and  power, 
once  secured,  lias  been  easily  retained.  The  number  of 
stockholders,  the  wide  territory  over   which  they  were 

i  A.  F.  Walker,  The  Forum,  August,  1892. 


376  civics. 

scattered,  the  little  direct  interest  most  of  them  took  in 
the  management,  the  extent  to  which  stock  was  con- 
tributed by  towns  and  cities,  the  fact  that  the  primary 
purpose  of  stockholders  was  so  often  simply  to  secure 
the  road,  have  combined  to  aid  the  officers  of  the  road 
in  controlling  stock,  in  taking  to  themselves  the  govern- 
ment of  the  road,  and  in  running  it  with  slight  reference 
to  the  interests  of  those  with  whom  it  has  been  a  busi- 
ness investment. 

The  later  method  of  extending  railroads  by  bonds, 
leaving  the  stock  in  the  hands  of  those  already  in  posses- 
sion of  the  parent  road,"  has  retained  the  power  thus 
secured.  Railroads  have  been  captured  and  held  against 
all  comers,  much  as  if  they  were  provinces  open  to  any 
man's  plunder.  The  common  method  has  been  through 
the  medium  of  the  stock  exchange.  The  managers  have, 
in  addition  to  the  ordinary  methods  of  raising  and  de- 
pressing stocks,  the  more  certain  method  of  running  the 
road  itself  so  as  to  advance  or  reduce  the  value  of  its 
securities.  If  the  officers  of  a  road  wish  to  dispose  of 
stock,  they  can  declare  dividends,  that  may  be  made 
at  the  expense  of  the  equipment  of  the  road,  or  from 
borrowed  money.  Stocks  are  thus  given  a  fictitious 
value.  If  they  wish  to  purchase  stock,  and  intrench 
themselves  in  possession  of  the  road,  they  can  with- 
hold dividends,  using  the  earnings  of  the  road  to  im- 
prove its  condition.  They  thus,  by  the  same  stroke, 
reduce  the  nominal  value  and  increase  the  actual  value 
of  stocks.  The  wrecking  of  a  road  is  a  ready  means  of 
taking  possession  of  it  with  new  power. 

In  the  construction  of  roads,  the  management  often 
stands  in  double  relations.     The  manager  reappears  as 


BAIL  WAYS.  377 

a  contractor  rendering  some  service  to  the  road,  or  as 
the  owner  of  lands  to  be  benefited  by  its  stations.  In 
the  extension  of  railways,  the  cost  has  been  frequently 
met  by  bonds  sustained  by  the  credit  of  a  parent  road. 
The  additional  stock  has  been  appropriated  in  whole  or 
in  part.  The  old  road  has,  in  the  persons  of  its  unpro- 
tected stockholders,  suffered  loss,  Avhile  the  managers 
have  gained  power  and  profit. 

This  dishonest  relation  of  managers  to  stockholders 
is  a  more  direct  wound  to  a  sound  commercial  life 
than  the  injuries  inflicted  on  the  public.  Managers,  in 
sacrificing  the  primary  interests  intrusted  to  them,  soon 
learn  to  give  no  heed  to  the  secondary  claims  of  the 
people  at  large.  These  dishonest  methods  tend  to  de- 
stroy confidence  everywhere,  and  make  a  most  extended 
and  conspicuous  branch  of  business  the  chosen  field  of 
commercial  bandits.  The  loss  to  the  community  in  the 
fluctuating  value  of  stocks,  in  the  reduction  of  the  oppor- 
tunities of  safe  investment,  in  weakening  the  motives  to 
thrift,  in  displacing  sober  productive  labor  with  reckless 
speculation,  in  occasioning  the  withdrawal  of  foreign 
capital,  and  in  aggravating  every  tendency  to  financial 
panic,  is  beyond  all  measurement.  The  feeble  are  dis- 
couraged, the  strong  are  distressed,  the  rash  are  elated, 
and  all  are  injured  save  here  and  there  one  who  has 
a.  genius  for  dishonesty. 

This  is  an  evil,  however,  which  tends  somewhat  to 
correct  itself.  If  railroad  investments  are  allowed  to 
become  universally  unsafe,  they  will,  in  a  corresponding 
degree,  cease  to  be  made.  Money  cannot  be  commanded 
on  these  terms.  We  have  already  paid  much  more 
highly  than  we  otherwise  should  for  the  construction 


378  civics. 

of  roads,  because  of  the  reduced  prices  at  which  bonds 
have  been  sold.  The  reckless  handling  of  railroads  has 
lasted  the  longer,  because  persons  and  municipalities, 
having  so  strong  an  interest  in  the  construction  of  rail- 
roads aside  from  stock,  have  not  been  disposed  to  be 
critical  as  to  method,  or  inclined  to  interpose  any  ob- 
stacle. Moreover,  as  a  road  becomes  strong,  and  its 
management  wise  and  efficient,  all  minor  errors  and  dis- 
honesties are  redeemed  in  the  public  mind.  Yet  these 
corrections  have  been  slow,  and  attended  with  great 
loss.  Whatever  the  efficiency  at  length  attained  by 
leading  roads,  there  have  always  been  roads,  like  the 
Union  Pacific  and  the  Atchison,  Topeka,  and  Santa  Fe, 
to  keep  the  public  mind  inflamed.  One  who  was  asked 
to  become  a  candidate  for  the  presidency  of  the  Beading 
Railroad  said  of  it,  "  He  had  never  known  it  to  be 
handled  otherwise  than  speculatively." 

AVhen  stockholders  are  at  peace  with  themselves  and 
prosperous,  they  not  infrequently  put  the  public  to  a 
disadvantage  by  an  increased  is.sue  of  stock  in  improv- 
ing and  expanding  the  road,  and  in  appropriating  this 
stock  at  par.  If  the  stock  of  a  road  is  worth  $200  a 
share,  and  an  increase  in  stock  is  divided  among  stock- 
holders at  par,  instead  of  being  sold  in  open  market,  the 
capital  on  which  the  road  must  henceforward  earn  prof- 
its is  correspondingly  increased.  Thus  the  Boston  and 
Albany,  by  securing  an  apportionment  of  this  character, 
has  confused,  by  a  needless  increase  of  stock,  its  real 
claims  on  the  public.  Its  stock  no  longer  represents 
the  cost  of  the  road.  Street  railways  sometimes  earn 
six  per  cent  on  stock  that  has  been  quietly  doubled  in 
the  hands   of  the   holders.     Owing  to  this   changeable 


RAILWAYS.  379 

and  dishonest  relation  of  management  to  stockholders, 
ami  of  stockholders  and  management  to  the  public,  the 
actual  returns  on  stock  and  bonds  are  variable,  and  the 
nominal  value  of  roads  is  widely  separated  from  their 
real  value.  There  are  no  conditions  present  from  which 
to  determine  what  are  the  just  claims  of  roads.  All  is 
hopeless  confusion.  About  half  the  stock  and  one-fifth 
of  the  bonds  of  railroads  in  the  United  States  pay- 
nothing.  ISuneteen  per  cent  of  the  stock  and  thirty- 
seven  per  cent  of  the  bonds  exceed  six  per  cent.  Such 
a  nucleus  of  loss,  risk,  and  dishonesty  in  the  very  heart 
of  the  business  world  is  a  very  great  evil. 

§  6.  The  second  class  of  offences  charged  on  railroads 
is  directed  against  the  public.  These  consist  of  three 
kinds  of  discrimination,  —  discrimination  between  goods, 
between  persons,  and  between  places.  The  injury  of 
railroads  to  business  lies  not  nearly  so  much  in  absolute 
rates  as  in  relative  rates,  not  in  distressing  commerce  as 
one  whole,  but  in  making  its  terms  unequal  between  man 
and  man.  This  is  a  more  serious  offence  than  high 
charges. 

Each  of  these  discriminations  on  the  part  of  railroads 
has,  within  narrow  limits,  a  just  basis.  This  fact  has 
been  first  the  occasion,  and  then  the  ostensible  justifica- 
tion, of  the  wrong.  It  also  cuts  us  off  from  the  simple 
remedy  of  prohibit  ion. 

The  first  discrimination  is  that  on  goods.  The  most 
simple  principle  regulating  charges  is  the  amount  of 
service  rendered,  the  weight  carried,  and  the  num- 
ber of  miles  which  it  is  carried  --omitting  lor  the 
moment  the  different  degrees  of  convenience  and  risk 
associated  with  different  goods.      This  principle,  though 


380  civics. 

going  but  a  little  way  in  settling  freights,  is  always 
present. 

A  second  principle  of  equal  practical  importance  is 
what  the  goods  will  bear.  A  large  portion  of  the  prod- 
ucts transported  would  be  stopped  at  once  if  freights 
were  charged  on  a  general  scale  of  weight  and  distance. 
More  bulky  and  less  valuable  articles  as  coal,  ore,  iron, 
cannot  bear  the  prices  which  would  express  the  service 
rendered  in  connection  with  the  mass  of  manufactured 
goods.  Another  way  of  looking  at  the  service  per- 
formed finds  entrance  ;  to  wit,  the  advantage  that  comes 
to  the  shipper.  What  can  he  afford  to  pa}'  and  still  re- 
tain the  terms  of  a  profitable  business.  This  principle, 
what  the  goods  will  bear,  may  lead  to  very  high  and  to 
very  low  charges.  A  railroad  carrying  freights  to  and 
from  secluded  silver  and  gold  mines  may  impose  very 
high  rates,  or  on  iron  ore  transported  to  distant  smelting- 
works  it  may  lay  very  low  rates.  The  charge  is  deter- 
mined by  the  nature  of  the  business  nourished,  and  lies 
between  freights  so  high  as  to  cripple  it,  and  freights  so 
low  as  to  yield  no  returns  to  the  road. 

The  debatable  ground  over  which  charges  may  fluctu- 
ate is  the  more  extended,  in  the  case  of  freights,  because 
there  are  two  forms  of  expenditure  in  railroads,  expendi- 
ture due  to  permanent  outlay  and  expenditure  due  to 
running  expenses.  A  road,  once  in  existence,  has 
already  met  permanent  expenditures.  These  are  not 
altered  by  carrying  more  or  less  freight.  The  road-bed, 
the  stations,  a  considerable  portion  of  the  employees, 
remain  the  same,  whether  the  business  done  is  light  or 
heavy.  A  large  share  of  the  cost  of  equipment  is  not 
much  altered  by  the  fluctuation  of  freights.     The  addi- 


HAIL  WA  rs.  381 

tional  cost  incident  to  additional  freight  is  involved  in 
running  expenses,  consumption  of  coal,  wear  of  engine 
and  cars,  additional  help.  The  charge,  therefore,  which 
yields  a  profit  to  a  road  taken  as  one  whole  is  widely 
different  from  the  charge  which  enables  it  to  cover  run- 
ning expenses,  and  something  more.  It  may  be  for  the 
interest  of  a  road,  in  view  of  future  business,  simply  to 
cover  by  its  charges  the  actual  expense  of  carriage,  and 
all  beyond  that  counts  towards  a  return  on  permanent 
outlay. 

For  clearness  of  apprehension  simply,  freights  may 
be  divided  into  independent,  dependent,  and  reciprocal 
freights.  Independent  freights  are  those  which  rest 
exclusively  on  the  service  rendered,  and  are  intended  to 
yield  the  railroad  a  return  on  its  entire  expenditure. 
The  goods  bear  the  same  rates  under  a  remunerative 
traffic.  The  independence,  however,  is  not  that  of  any 
one  shipper,  but  of  all  shippers  collectively  bearing  to- 
gether the  cost  of  service.  If  the  traffic  is  increased  or 
diminished,  the  rates  experience  a  corresponding  change. 
Dependent  freights  are  freights  granted  as  accessories  to 
a  self-sustaining  line  of  business.  They  are  only  par- 
tially remunerative,  and  are  to  be  judged  only  in  connec- 
tion with  the  entire  trade.  One  may  send  daily  by 
team  goods  to  a  neighboring  village.  The  cost  of  this 
transfer  would  represent  independent  freights.  The 
wagon  returns  empty.  The  carrier  may  prefer  a  return 
load,  though  the  price  paid  is  much  less  than  the  charge 
on  the  goods  for  which  the  service  has  been  established. 
This  reduced  charge  represents  dependent  freights, 
freights  that  are  carried  because  of  other  more  remuner- 
ative work.     If  the  return  commodities  pay  simply  their 


382  avit  n. 

own  additional  cost,  they  are  wholly  dependent  on  the 
stronger  traffic  which  makes  this  form  of  transfer  possi- 
ble. Both  independent  and  dependent  freights  mark 
extreme  points,  and  do  not  express,  except  to  a  very 
limited  degree,  actual  charges.  The  goods  offered  for 
carriage  vary  in  their  ability  to  bear  freights  through 
the  entire  scale  of  prices,  and  are  constantly  fluctuating 
in  their  position  on  that  scale.  The  prices  paid  at  one 
point  ought  to  effect  the  prices  paid  at  all  points. 

Hence  we  have,  as  the  composite  result,  what  we  have 
termed  reciprocal  freights,  charges  suiting  themselves 
ever  more  accurately  to  the  entire  traffic  with  which 
they  are  associated,  charges  which  combine  both  prin- 
ciples, service  rendered  and  what  the  goods  will  bear. 
A  schedule  of  prices  so  constructed  is  alike  favorable  to 
all  parties.  The  higher  freights  are  reduced  somewhat 
by  the  lower  freights,  and  the  lower  freights,  mounting 
no  faster  than  the  business  involved  will  allow,  are 
aided  by  the  higher  freights.  The  railroad  profits  by 
each  and  all  of  them. 

All,  or  nearly  all,  freights  are  reciprocal,  are  charges 
made  in  view  of  a  complicated  commerce.  The  practical 
question  is  the  justness  of  the  reciprocal  relations  ac- 
tually in  force.  The  facts  combined  in  any  schedule  of 
freights  are  so  many,  so  obscure,  and  capable  of  such 
different  renderings,  as  to  make  anything  like  absolute 
justice  impossible.  Burdens  are  easily  shifted  from 
one  branch  of  trade  to  another.  The  traffic  which  can 
readily  bear  heavy  freights  is  likely  to  receive  them,  and 
the  traffic  that  is  critical  and  accustomed  to  concessions 
is  treated  with  undue  consideration.  This  result  follows 
the  more  readily  because  in  itself  it  is  so  obscure,  and 


BAIL  WATS.  383 

because  the  power  of  goods  to  bear  charges  is  constantly 
changing.  A  steady  pressure  should  be  applied  from 
beneath  to  carry  up  dependent,  and  from  above  to  force 
down  independent,  freights,  till  they  approach  each  other 
in  well-adjusted  reciprocal  charges.  Ignorance  will  issue 
in  many  errors,  and  personal  interests  in  many  more. 
There  is  no  limit  in  these  adjustments  to  the  possibili- 
ties of  wrong,  nor  to  the  ways  in  which  wrongs  actually 
arise.  Fortunately  commerce  depends  more  on  uniform- 
ity in  rates,  in  each  class  of  customers,  than  on  absolute 
justice  in  the  arrangement  of  freights  between  them. 

The  chief  method  by  which  charges  are  adjusted  is  a 
classification  of  goods.  The  freights  in  each  class  are 
intended  to  express  the  reciprocal  dependence  of  the 
different  forms  of  traffic.  These  classes  constitute  at 
best  but  a  rough  and  inadequate  and  inflexible  solution 
of  the  problem,  and  are  complicated  by  considerations  of 
an  entirely  distinct  character.  Goods  are  subjected  to 
different  charges,  according  to  the  ease  of  handling,  the 
degree  of  risk  involved,  the  promptness  of  delivery 
demanded,  the  relation  of  weight  to  bulk.  The  just 
reciprocal  price,  sufficiently  difficult  in  itself  to  deter- 
mine, is  farther  hidden  by  these  accessory  relations 
taken   in  connection   with  it. 

In  a  country  as  large  as  the  United  States,  the  traffic 
in  the  different  sections  is  not  sufficiently  uniform  in  its 
conditions  to  accept  the  same  classification  and  the  same 
schedule  of  prices.  The  much  heavier  business,  and  the 
more  varied  business,  which  lies  between  Chicago  and 
the  East,  separates  it  from  the  business  between  Chicago 
and  the  Missouri  River,  and  still  more  from  the  busi- 
ness beyond  that  river.     An  effort  to  secure  one  system 


384  CIVICS. 

has  not  been  acceptable,  because  such  a  system  would 
issue  in  the  Eastern  Belt  in  higher  freights,  and  freights 
less  well  adjusted  than  at  present.  When  we  add  to  the 
perplexity  of  each  belt  the  perplexity  arising  from  the 
passage  of  the  same  goods  into  different  belts,  we  have 
conditions  which  make  the  confusion  of  commerce  very 
great.  Goods  in  small  quantities,  on  unusual  routes,  are 
open  to  unexpected  and  excessive  charges ;  and  goods  in 
large  quantities,  on  usual  routes,  secure  exceptionally 
favorable  terms. 

Unfairness  and  dishonesty  find  their  opportunity  in 
making  classifications,  in  shifting  goods  arbitrarily  from 
one  class  to  another,  in  a  reduction  of  .charges,  a  re- 
bate within  the  class  itself,  in  excessive  weights,  in 
allowing  goods  for  way  stations  to  be  billed  at  through 
rates,  and  in  allowing  a  break  in  transit,  as  of  wheat 
for  the  purpose  of  milling.  With  these  and  kindred 
forms  of  secret  discrimination,  the  conditions  of  an 
honest  business  between  man  and  man  have  been  lost, 
and  success  has  become  the  reward  of  the  most  un- 
scrupulous methods. 

Proximate  justice,  which  is  all  that  is  attainable  under 
the  best  intention,  is  not  more  important  than  uniform- 
ity and  piiblicity.  If  rates  are  well  known  and  fairly 
permanent,  business  adjusts  itself  to  them.  Those  en- 
gaged in  the  same  form  of  production  have  equal  terms. 
One  of  the  requirements  of  the  Interstate  Commerce 
Law  was  the  publication  of  freights  and  a  notice  in  ad- 
vance of  all  changes  to  be  made  in  them.  The  law  has 
been  ineffectual  in  two  respects.  Secret  rates  have  still 
been  given,  and  the  printed  schedules  have  been  ar- 
ranged in  so  obscure  a  form,  and  been  followed  by  so 


RAILWAYS.  385 

many    changes,    dependent    in    interpretation    on    each 
other,  as  to  lead  to  hopeless  confusion.1 

Out  of  this  changeable  medley  of  mischievous  facts, 
mischievous  to  the  public  and  mischievous  to  the  rail- 
roads, nothing  can  bring  order  and  the  conditions  of 
prosperous  commerce  but  wide,  patient  control,  directed 
to  the  ends  of  equality  and  publicity.  Any  one  road  is 
unable,  however  much  it  may  wish  to  do  so,  to  correct 
this  evil.  The  roads  are  often  as  much  the  victims  of 
these  enforced  and  unfortunate  results  as  the  agents  in 
them. 

This  unmanageable  perplexity  is  the  result  of  an 
expensive  and  blind  competition,  which  is  incapable  of 
either  fully  understanding  or  controlling  the  conditions 
under  which  it  is  operating.  Competition  is  peculiarly 
sharp  between  railroads,  because  of  the  very  immediate 
and  disastrous  consequences  of  being  underbidden,  and 
because  the  weaker  and  less  responsible  road  has  an 
advantage  over  the  stronger  and  more  responsible  one. 
A  road  that  is  at  no  pains  to  pay  dividends,  that  is  sat- 
isfied with  meeting  running  expenses,  carries,  compared 
with  a  road  whose  stock  is  at  par,  a  very  light  burden. 
The  only  way  in  which  its  low  freights  can  be  met  by 
a  responsible  road  is  by  dropping  charges  below  run- 
ning expenses,  and  exhausting  its  competitor  by  these 
ruinous  rates.  It  cannot  leave  the  bankrupt  road  alone; 
if  it  does,  its  traffic  soon  slips  from  it.  It  must  com- 
pel its  unscrupulous  rival  to  come  to  terms  by  making 
its  expenditures  an  actual  loss.  In  this  struggle  the 
stronger  road  regains  the  advantage  of  its  strength.  It 
can  endure  the  longer  the  wasteful  strife.     The  object 

i  "The  Railway  Problem,"  A.  B.  Stickney,  p.  138. 


386  CIVICS. 

of  all  parties  to  the  contention  is  to  inflict  as  many 
losses  as  possible  on  other  competitors,  and  so  force  an 
issue.  The  escape  is  found  in  the  concession  of  such 
rates  as  restore  the  normal  balance  of  trade  and  give 
each  road  its  due  share.  The  agreement  by  which  this 
restoration  is  secured  is  a  pool  —  a  word  of  ill-omen, 
because  it  implies  combination,  a  suspension  of  compe- 
tition. The  competition  whose  absence  Ave  deprecate  is 
not  a  wholesome  law  of  production,  but  a  bitter  and 
ruinous  strife,  in  which  the  interests  of  the  railways 
and  of  the  public  are  alike  sacrificed.  A  few,  for  a 
brief  period,  may  have  profited  by  the  low  rates ;  but 
these  unimportant  gains  have  been  secured  by  a  fluctua- 
tion of  freights  that  carries  unforeseen  and  unavoidable 
danger  everywhere  into  commerce.  In  1869  fourth-class 
freight  varied  on  competing  Eastern  lines  from  Chicago 
from  82/  to  25/  per  100  lbs. ;  in  1875,  from  60/  to  20/; 
in  1876,  from  45/  to  16/.  Gains  here  and  there  by 
profits  which  excite  and  disturb  trade  are  no  compensa- 
tion for  the  fluctuations  incident. to  them.  Pools  have 
not,  as  a  rule,  resulted  in  exorbitant  rates ;  they  have 
simply  restored  normal  conditions. 

Pools  have  taken  two  forms,  a  division  of  freights, 
leaving  the  goods  to  take  their  own  course,  and  a  divis- 
ion of  goods  for  carriage  between  the  roads.  In  1884 
the  latter  method  resulted  in  the  redirection  of  only 
2.6  per  cent,  of  the  traffic  involved.1  The  rapidity  with 
which  goods  are  shifted  from  road  to  road  by  lower 
freights  was  illustrated  in  the  results  which  followed 
the  prohibition  of  pools  by  the  Interstate  Commerce 
Law.      It  was  shortly  found  that  the  Trunk  Railroad 

i  "The  Tublic  Regulation  of  Railways,"  W.  D.  Dabney,  p.  147. 


RAILWAYS.  387 

was  carrying  33.8  per  cent  of  the  traffic,  and  the  Fort 
Wayne  but  11.8  per  cent.  The  stronger  road  could  no 
longer  control  the  weaker  one. 

The  prohibition  of  pools  should  have  been  accompa- 
nied by  the  power  to  regulate  freights.  Pools  are  the 
only  method  by  which  competing  roads  can  constrain 
each  other.  If  these  are  forbidden,  they  should  be  re- 
placed by  some  other  form  of  regulation.  It  is  a  total 
misapprehension  of  competition,  as  a  productive  princi- 
ple, and  of  the  circumstances  under  which  a  cutting 
of  rates  proceeds,  that  leads  us  to  condemn  pools.  "We 
are  governed  by  words,  rather  than  by  ideas.  There 
may  be  a  more  ideal  result  than  pools ;  but  pools  are 
ideal  as  compared  with  a  malevolent,  unrestrained  re- 
duction of  freights,  though  we  choose  to  call  it  com- 
petition. 

§  7.  The  second  form  of  discrimination  is  between 
persons.  This  is  one  of  the  most  mischievous  forms, 
as  it  destroys  all  conditions  of  justice,  equality,  be- 
tween man  and  man,  and  proceeds  wholly  in  secret. 
One  engaged  in  the  produce  business  in  a  large  city 
finds  his  traffic,  for  unexplained  reasons,  slipping  from 
him.  He  goes  West  to  the  sources  of  supply,  and  dis- 
covers that  lower  freights  have  been  granted  to  competi- 
tors. He  immediately  bestirs  himself  to  secure  better 
rates.  He  returns  to  his  place  of  business,  and  shortly 
finds  that  all  the  irrigating  streams  of  commerce  run 
his  way,  and  that  his  neighbor's  fields  now  lie  parched. 
All  goes  well  till  some  one  else  meddles  with  the 
water  at  its  fountain. 

Great  monopolies,  like  the  four  great  companies  at 
Chicago   which   have   so   long   governed    the  meat  mar- 


388  CIVICS. 

ket,  stamping  on  every  village  and  country  market  and 
cart  in  New  England,  "  Chicago  Beef,"  owe  their  growth 
to  railroad  connections  too  powerful  to  be  broken.  The 
commercial  world  has  never  seen  more  numerous,  more 
extended,  more  injurious  monopolies  than  those  which 
have  now  come  to  control  trade  in  the  United  States. 
Two  cars  containing  butter  arrive  in  Boston  the  same 
day,  one  from  a  retired  station  in  Vermont,  one  in 
the  great  line  of  trade  from  Iowa.  The  first  is  de- 
livered in  a  common  car  in  poor  order  ;  the  second  in 
a  refrigerator  car,  in  excellent  order,  and  at  rates  not 
exceeding  those  charged  the  first  lot.  No  natural  foot- 
ing for  business  remains  to  the  average  citizen.  Each 
man  and  each  company  get  what  advantages  they  can 
steal,  and  no  others ;  and  this  perpetual  pilfer  is  called 
competition,  and  takes  to  itself  the  authority  of  an  eco- 
nomic law. 

Fortunately  the  conditions  are  more  simple  in  this 
form  of  discrimination  than  in  either  of  the  other  two. 
Direct  prohibition  is  admissible  with  few  limitations. 
Any  action  which  interferes  with  rates,  uniform  for  all, 
is  a  gross  injury  to  commerce,  and  destructive  of  in- 
dividual rights.1 

One  simple  principle  comes  in  as  a  limitation  of  this 
equality.  Large  shipments  have  a  claim  for  better 
terms  than  small  shipments.  This  principle,  capable 
of  easy  perversion  and  readily  made  a  cover  for  illicit 
freights,  can  only  be  admitted  in  a  rough,  partial  form. 
The  charges  on  a  car-load  may  be  less  than  those  on  a 
smaller  amount.  A  car-load,  as  an  arbitrary  unit, 
does  not  quite  meet  all  the  differences  of  labor  involved 

i  "Railway  Secrecy  and  Trusts,"  John  M.  Bonham,  p.  7'-'. 


RAILWAYS.  389 

in  smaller  and  greater  amounts,  but  it  is  a  near  ap- 
proach to  justice.  It  cuts  off  the  large  shipper  from 
that  exaction  which  he  soon  comes  to  exercise  over 
railway  service.  If  the  open  rates,  enjoined  by  the 
Interstate  Commerce  Law,  had  been  rendered  in  good 
faith,  this  form  of  discrimination  would  have  disap- 
peared. As  a  matter  of  fact,  it  has  only  been  the  more 
carefully  concealed. 

§  8.  The  third  form  of  discrimination  is  between 
places.  It  may  be  between  way  and  terminal  stations, 
or  between  terminal  stations.  Here,  as  in  the  first 
form  of  discrimination,  we  are  confronted  by  condi- 
tions so  complex  that  it  is  not  easy  to  determine  what 
the  demand  of  the  public  welfare  is.  Different  places 
have,  by  virtue  of  position,  very  diverse  advantages  as 
regards  commerce.  These  diversities  are  natural ;  we 
guide  our  actions  by  them;  we  attach  no  injustice  to 
them.  Railways  are  artificial  channels  of  commerce. 
Are  we  bound,  in  the  management  of  them,  to  reduce 
as  far  as  possible  these  inequalities ;  or  may  we  leave 
them  as  they  are ;  or  may  we  enhance  them  ?  It  would 
seem  that  the  just  answer,  in  a  general  form,  would  be, 
that  the  railroad  may  recognize  these  inequalities  of 
natural  advantage,  and  work  under  them ;  is  neither 
bound  to  overcome  them  nor  at  liberty  to  enhance 
them.  A  railroad,  like  the  New  York  Central,  may 
reach  its  destination  by  a  comparatively  direct  line 
lying  through  a  territory  of  large  commercial  resources. 
Another  road,  like  the  Erie  in  its  early  history,  may 
pursue  a  circuitous  route  through  a  more  difficult  region 
yielding  less  traffic.  Where  two  roads,  like  these  roads, 
reach  a  large  centre  as  a  common  terminal,  is  the  less 


390  civics. 


remunerative  road  to  be  put  to  the  further  disadvantage 
of  subjecting  its  way  business  to  charges  determined  by 
through  freights  ?  If  it  is  to  have  a  share  in  the 
through  traffic,  it  must  accept  the  rates  assigned  by 
its  more  fortunate  competitor.  If  it  must  at  once  re- 
duce its  charges  through  its  entire  course  to  suit  these 
new  conditions,  then  a  costly,  restricted,  and  difficult 
service  is  compelled  to  conform  itself  to  a  large  and 
prosperous  traffic.  The  railway  is  forced  to  equalize, 
in  part,  the  commercial  advantages  of  places  very 
differently  situated.  Such  a  road  does  not  simply 
develop  the  region  through  which  it  passes,  it  is 
compelled  to  reduce  its  rates  quite  in  anticipation  of 
development.  If,  on  the  other  hand,  it  is  allowed  to 
charge  way  stations  higher  freights  than  it  receives 
on  through  traffic,  a  service  less  in  amount  is  made  to 
pay  more  than  one  greater  in  amount.  This  apparent 
anomaly  makes  the  shipper  very  confident  that  he  has 
suffered  wrong.  The  freight  at  one  time  on  a  carload 
of  potatoes  from  Rochester  to  Philadelphia  was  $48. 
The  charges  at  the  same  time  to  Wilkesbarre,  a  station 
143  miles  nearer  Rochester,  was  $60.  A  carload  was 
shipped  to  Philadelphia  and  stopped  at  Wilkesbarre. 
The  road  sent  in  a  bill  for  $  12.1 

There  are  three  cases  in  which  relations,  difficult  of 
solution,  are  liable  to  arise.  A  railroad  starting  from  a 
commercial  centre  may,  by  a  costly  route,  reach  a  sea- 
port, and  encounter  water  freights.  A  railway  from 
New  York  to  New  Orleans  is  an  example.  Shall  the 
rates  to  all  the  intervening  places  be  affected  by  rates 
conceded    at    New    Orleans,    as    a    means    of    securing 

i  "  The  Public  Regulation  of  Railways,"  p.  106. 


RAILWAYS.  391 

through  traffic  ?  A  railway  may  unite  two  great  cen- 
tres of  distribution,  like  New  York  and  Chicago,  and 
yet  in  the  greater  part  of  its  course  render  a  local  and 
narrow  service.  Shall  the  advantages  and  disadvantages 
of  competing  routes  be  equalized  because  of  the  trade 
they  share  in  common  ?  Two  railroads,  starting  from 
the  same  centre,  may  enter  a  remote  and  productive 
region,  as  a  certain  section  of  the  Mississippi  Valley, 
from  opposite  extremities,  and  there  running  parallel 
to  each  other  serve  the  same  territory.  They  compete 
with  each  other  along  this  overlapping  portion  of  their 
lines.  The  movement  of  trains  which  increases  the 
distance  on  one  road  will  diminish  it  on  the  other. 
There  will  be  some  station  at  which  the  difference 
between  the  two  roads,  in  the  distances  of  carriage, 
will  be  at  a  maximum,  and  may  be  very  considerable. 
The  freights  at  this  station  will  be  ruled  by  the  shortest 
route.  The  longer  route  must  necessarily  accept  these 
charges,  if  it  is  to  be  a  partaker  in  the  traffic.  If  it 
is  also  compelled  to  suffer  loss  at  many  other  stations, 
by  grading  its  freights  to  this  lowest  freight,  it  may 
easily  be  the  worse  for  the  new  business  it  has  secured. 
Neither  of  the  roads  could  charge,  at  any  of  the  stations 
which  they  hold  in  common,  a  higher  rate  than  that 
which  fell  to  the  place  giving  the  longest  distance  on 
the  one  road  and  the  shortest  on  the  other. 

Freights,  determined  thus  arbitrarily  by  distance,  are 
not  reasonable,  either  in  reference  to  roads  or  shippers. 
Suppose  a  road,  at  heavy  expense,  to  have  penetrated 
a  rough,  and  relatively  unproductive,  region.  Suppose 
the  question  is  open  to  it  whether  it  shall  press  on  to 
a  seaport,  and  so  give  the  territory  an  outlet  in   both 


392  civics. 

directions.  Way  stations  would  find  their  advantage  in 
such  an  extension,  exactly  as  they  found  their  advan- 
tage in  the  entrance  of  the  road.  Suppose  the  road  to 
run  from  New  York  in  the  direction  of  New  Orleans, 
and  to  have  reached  Jackson,  Mississippi.  If  it  pro- 
ceeds to  New  Orleans,  it  gives  commerce  to  way  stations 
by  both  outlets,  and  itself  secures  through  traffic.  What 
is  the  relation  of  this  traffic  to  way  freights  ?  So  long 
as  the  charges  on  it  are  sufficient  to  cover  the  expense 
of  carriage,  way  stations  are  helped,  not  harmed,  by  it. 
They  have  the  gains  of  a  double  communication  with  no 
new  cost.  If,  at  any  time,  through  freights  somewhat 
exceed  the  additional  running  expenses,  the  road  is 
strengthened  and  can  extend  better  service  to  all  its 
customers. 

Way  stations,  under  these  conditions,  may  be  sacri- 
ficed to  terminals  by  accepting  through  freights  at  less 
than  cost,  the  road  imposing  the  burdens  thus  assumed 
on  its  remaining  business.  This  has  happened  for  a 
long  period  with  heavy  expenditure  in  connection  with 
through  freights  from  Minneapolis  and  St.  Paul  to 
Chicago.1  Or  through  freights,  though  enlarging  the 
revenue  of  the  road,  may  still  yield  less  than  they  ought 
to  yield.  Or  way  freights  may  not  be  reduced,  when 
the  circumstances  of  the  case  admit  reduction. 

Eailroads  feel  secure  as  to  way  traffic,  they  are  not 
attentive  to  its  claims  ;  they  feel  insecure  as  to  through 
traffic,  and  place  upon  it  a  high  estimate.  They  are 
inclined,  therefore,  to  make  every  possible  concession  to 
the  one  trade,  and  treat  negligently  the  other.  Thus  a 
principle,  in  itself  sound,  that  a  road  is  not  bound  to 

l  "  The  Railway  Problem,"  pp.  98,  112. 


RAILWAYS.  393 

equalize  natural  advantages  between  different  places, 
but  may  order  its  traffic  in  reference  to  them,  may 
readily  lead,  under  intense  competition,  to  a  great  and 
unjust  increase  of  advantages  for  terminals,  and  an  un- 
reasonable diminution  of  them  for  way  stations. 

The  bad  facts  which  have  thus  arisen  have  given  rise 
to  the  question  of  long  and  short  hauls,  and  to  the  pro- 
hibition, by  the  Interstate  Commerce  Law,  of  heavier 
freights  on  shorter  hauls  than  on  longer  hauls  on  the 
same  line.  The  problem  is  too  complex,  involves  too 
many  conflicting  considerations,  for  so  simple  a  solution. 
An  arbitrary  rule,  itself  involving  injustice,  gives  rise  to 
new  evasions  and  new  injuries.  It  can  hardly  be  for 
the  interest  of  a  railroad  to  open  out  its  traffic  in  all 
directions,  if  it  is  compelled  thereby  to  submit  its  entire 
service,  in  the  charges  laid,  to  that  portion  of  it  which 
is  performed  under  the  greatest  pressure.  It  is  sufficient 
thai  the  way  station  profits  by  the  through  traffic,  with- 
out fully  sharing  its  advantages.  The  entire  relations 
call  for  a  wider  outlook  than  the  interests  of  any  one 
road,  or  place,  or  form  of  trade  offers.  The  supervising 
power  must  at  once  be  ample  and  impartial.  The  con- 
flict of  interests  known  as  competition  creates  the  evil ; 
it  does  not  solve  it. 

In  a  very  flexible  community,  like  the  West,  and  one 
whose  productive  resources  are  from  the  outset  antici- 
pated and  shaped  by  railroads,  the  discriminations  be- 
tween places  assume  large  dimensions,  and  go  far  to 
determine  business  centres.  The  points  at  which  differ- 
ent systems  of  roads  touch  each  other  gain  at  once  a 
marked  advantage  over  places  whose  traffic  is  dependent 
on  single  lines.     Population,  in  itself  very  mobile,  gathers 


o'.U  CIVICS. 

about  these  centres,  and  they  soon  preoccupy  the  com- 
mercial  field.  An  electric  force,  acting  among  steel 
filings,  has  no  more  obviously  an  arranging  power  than 
have  railroads  in  the  open  and  proximately  equal  advan- 
tages of  the  uniform  West. 

This  is  the  more  to  be  regretted,  because  this  expan- 
sion takes  place  at  the  cost  of  less  fortunate  persons  and 
places.  Freights  are  unreasonably  heavy  at  one  point, 
and  unreasonably  light  at  another.  "While  these  results 
follow  from  the  competition  of  railroads,  they  are  by  no 
means  shaped  by  any  overruling  sagacity  on  the  part  of 
the  management  of  these  roads.  They  are  an  obsctire, 
complex  product  of  intrigue,  accident,  and  the  drift  of 
tendencies  too  strong  for  those  who  take  part  in  them. 
When  competing  roads  reach  the  same  centre  they  strug- 
gle in  a  blind  way  for  the  trade,  burdening  their  present 
resources  to  secure  it.  The  results  reached  follow  no 
wise  estimate,  but  are  forced  by  the  roads  on  each  other 
by  a  blind  conventional  policy.  "  Each  manager  sur- 
rounds himself  with  a  standing  army  of  freight  and 
passenger  agents,  contracting  agents,  soliciting  agents, 
advertising  agents,  travelling  agents,  clerks,  typewriters, 
and  runners."  x  These  men,  confident  and  officious, 
acting  with  little  direction,  under  a  competitive  spirit 
that  blinds  itself  to  every  consideration  but  immediate 
success,  determine  for  each  other  and  for  their  respective 
roads  methods  and  rates  which  have  no  permanency, 
and  no  justification  but  the  caprice  of  circumstances. 
The  folly  and  the  shame  are  that  events  so  widely  influ- 
ential on  human  welfare  are  left  to  shape  themselves 
under  tendencies  at  once  blind  and  selfish.     The  lesson 

i  "  The  Railway  Problem,"  p.  86. 


RAILWAYS.  395 

is  that  oversight,  wider  and  more  potent  than  any  yet 
exercised,  can  alone  constitute  a  rational  effort  to  correct 
these  evils.  Certain  it  is  that  no  regulation  will  be  per- 
fect ;  equally  certain  is  it  that  regulation  ought  to  be, 
and  can  be,  made  to  be  partially  corrective  of  these  pal- 
pable wrongs. 

The  second  form  of  discrimination  between  places  lies 
between  terminals.  This  discrimination  assumes  vari- 
ous forms.  The  power  of  railways  to  divert  trade  from 
long  established  channels,  and  turn  it  suddenly,  in  full 
flood,  in  some  new  direction,  is  illustrated  by  the  experi- 
ence of  the  great  commercial  cities  on  our  Eastern  sea- 
board. The  Gen  ius  Loci  strnis  to  have  lost  much  of  its 
power  in  the  presence  of  this  new  Demon  of  traffic. 
Boston,  New  York,  Philadelphia,  Baltimore,  have  their 
systems  of  roads  which  guard  their  respective  interests, 
and  agree  on  rates  designed  to  maintain  the  existing 
balance.  Boston  defends  the  Trunk  Railroad  in  its 
immunities,  because  it  offers  a  channel  of  trade  west- 
ward largely  its  own. 

Railways  undertake  to  neutralize  strong  natural  ad- 
vantages, and  by  their  own  edict  determine  what  cities 
shall  be  built  up,  and  what  cities  shall  decline.  The 
Chicago,  Milwaukee,  and  St.  Paul  Railroad  determined 
to  make  every  station  on  its  route  as  near  to  Chicago 
as  to  Duluth.  The  difference  of  distance  contended 
with  at  the  chief  points  of  shipment,  St.  Paul  and  Min- 
neapolis, was  two  hundred  and  forty-four  miles.  Wheat 
and  flour  were  carried  for  three  and  one-half  mills  per 
ton  per  mile.1  The  development  of  Superior  and  Duluth 
has  been  much  retarded  by  this  policy;  the  commerce 

i  "The Railway  Problem,"  p.  43. 


396  civics. 

of  many  places  which  had  no  interest  in  the  arbitrary 
dictum  of  a  railroad  was  burdened  by  it,  and  great  nat- 
ural resources,  in  whose  development  we  are  all  con- 
cerned, were  made  unfruitful. 

The  American  mind  is  so  humbled  and  subdued  by 
the  very  notion  of  business  that  any  bold  method,  no 
matter  how  unwarranted  and  pernicious  it  may  be,  is 
looked  on  as  something  heroic.  The  public  welfare,  as 
one  whole,  is  far  better  subserved  by  accepting  the  nat- 
ural conditions  which  rest  upon  us  than  by  any  perse- 
vering contention  of  interested  persons  against  them. 
The  struggle  that  thus  goes  on  between  place  and  place 
soon  surrounds  itself  with  the  same  unreasonable  and 
destructive  passions  that  characterize  the  contentions 
of  men  in  war.  The  public  welfare  is  far  better  met 
by  the  wider  distribution  of  advantages  which  is  con- 
nected with  natural  gifts,  than  by  this  forced  concen- 
tration secured  by  a  stringent  competition.  Chicago, 
as  an  intervening  point  of  distribution,  defends  itself 
constantly,  by  means  of  railroad  rates,  from  secondary 
centres  farther  west  to  which  a  portion  of  her  enormous 
business  would  naturally  fall.  Omaha  and  Kansas 
City  struggle  with  freights  that  favor  Chicago.  A  dis- 
crimination in  behalf  of  live-stock  and  against  meat 
products  on  the  roads  between  these  cities  and  Chicago 
help  to  make  Chicago  the  cattle  market  of  the  United 
States.  On  the  other  hand,  there  is  a  series  of  cities 
more  remote  from  Chicago,  as  Kansas  City,  Omaha,  St. 
Paul,  and  Minneapolis,  that  are  favored  in  comparison 
with  intervening  cities  and  with  places  beyond  the  Mis- 
souri. Light  rates  to  these  distant  centres  carry  freights 
through  intervening  towns,  and  heavy  rates  beyond  them 


RAILWAYS.  o(.»7 

make  them  centres  of  distribution.  Thus  the  city  of 
Lincoln,  a  few  miles  west  of  the  Missouri,  could  secure 
the  rates  of  Omaha  only  by  a  severe  struggle.1 

§9.  Our  railroad  system -has  grown  up  under  the 
caprice  of  circumstances,  lawless  combination,  and  the 
grasping  power  of  individuals,  fully  subject  to  the  de- 
ceptive and  short-sighted  methods  of  competition  which 
have  often  in  turn  subdued  those  who  have  set  them 
on  foot.  The  Standard  Oil  Company  soon  held  in  its 
leash,  as  so  many  hounds,  the  railroads  that  ran  on  its 
errands.  The  result  has  been  extensive  and  grievous 
wrongs,  inflicted  on  single  persons  and  on  the  commu- 
nity at  large,  and  also  great  losses  which  have  overtaken 
the  railroads  and  their  stockholders.  This  tremendous 
instrument  of  production,  working  like  a  blind  giant, 
has  associated  everywhere  its  immense  service  with 
cruel  injury.  It  is  plain,  therefore,  that  if  comprehen- 
sive oversight  is  designed  to  play  any  part  in  human 
affairs,  here  is  its  opportunity.  It  was  the  object  of 
the  Interstate  Commerce  Commission  to  provide  this 
oversight.  The  success  of  the  effort  has  been  but  par- 
tial. The  work  was  too  great  to  be  achieved  by  a  single 
effort.  It  has  brought  the  problem  much  more  dis- 
tinctly liefore  the  public.  It  has  helped  to  disclose  the 
principles  which  must  ultimately  solve  it.  It  has  ex- 
erted no  inconsiderable  restraint  on  the  more  unscrupu- 
lous methods  of  railroad  management.  It  has  helped 
to  quicken  efforts,  like  those  of  the  Western  Traffic 
Association,  which  look  to  more  just  and  systematic 
methoils. 

1  A.  (', .  Warner,  Political  Science  Quarterly,  vol.  vi.  p.  66;  "The 
Railway  Probkmi,"  p.  52. 


398  civics. 

On  the  other  hand,  it  has  very  generally  failed  to  se- 
cure obedience  to  its  injunctions.  It  has  superseded 
some  former  methods  of  regulation,  as  that  of  pools, 
without  being  able  to  put  anything  in  their  place,  and  it 
has  shown  with  increasing  clearness  that  its  power  was 
not  sufficient  for  the  duties  laid  upon  it.  It  is  now  ready 
to  be  reconstructed  and  re-enforced  for  wiser  and  more 
effective  work. 

Some  obvioiis  failures  have  been  indicated.  Publicity 
and  permanence  in  rates  have  been  evaded  and  disre- 
garded. The  law  has  worked  against  the  long,  Aveak 
roads  by  this  demand  for  publicity,  by  equalizing  long 
and  short  hauls,  and  against  all  roads  by  forbidding 
pools.  These  roads,  therefore,  having  no  fair  terms  con- 
ceded them,  have  evaded  the  law,  and  secret  discrimina- 
tions have  gained  something  of  their  old  force. 

The  prohibition  of  pools  led  to  the  farther  extension 
of  combination.  If  the  traffic  eastward  could  not  be 
controlled  when  it  had  reached  such  a  centre  as  Chicago, 
then  it  must  be  laid  hold  of  in  advance  of  that  point. 
Thus  the  stronger  systems  have  stretched  their  influence 
outward  as  far  as  possible  toward  the  fountains  of  trade. 
The  evil  of  an  arbitrary  arrest  of  combination,  in  the 
case  of  pools,  has  been  seen,  and  is  in  process  of  correc- 
tion. 

Great  gains  to  the  community  are  involved  in  the  ex- 
tension of  railway  systems.  If  all  roads  could  be  run 
with  perfect  reference  to  each  other,  the  ease,  safety,  ra- 
pidity, and  cheapness  of  transporation  would  be  greatly 
increased.  The  combinations  which  come  in  connection 
with  competition  have  advantages,  advantages  which 
are  often  the  occasion  of  the  combination,  but  advan- 


RAILWAYS.  399 

tages  associated  with  severe  losses.  The  conflict  and 
confusion  along  the  lines  of  division  between  rival  sys- 
tems become  the  more  mischievous.  Strong  roads  over- 
burden themselves,  weak  ones  are  utterly  crushed,  and 
the  extension  of  commerce  is  attended  by  a  large  and 
unnecessary  loss.  Just  now  the  Atchison,  Topeka,  ami 
Santa  Fe  Railroad  has  passed  into  the  hands  of  a  re- 
ceiver, with  unexpected  loss  to  its  stockholders,  because 
of  this  form  of  management  and  its  towering  ambition. 
The  law  has  not  yet  mastered  these  most  dishonest  and 
ruinous  excesses. 

The  Commission  has  been  embarrassed  by  too  little 
power,  and  power  too  difficult  to  use.  The  task  is  too 
great  for  the  means  provided.  Great  evils  must  be  con- 
fronted with  great  resistance.  The  magnitude  of  the 
work  and  its  importance  to  the  public  call  for  increased 
strength  in  investigation,  in  award,  and  in  enforcement. 
The  work  of  the  Commission  is  not  so  much  judicial,  as 
it  is  executive  and  directive.  The  principles  which 
must  guide  it  are  those  which  are  coming  to  the  light  in 
the  very  circumstances  in  which  we  find  ourselves,  and 
not  those  familiar  in  the  courts.  Our  courts  have  been 
in  full  activity  during  the  entire  period  in  which  these 
evils  have  overtaken  us,  and  have  in  no  way  anticipated 
them  or  redressed  them.  It  is  sufficient  that  our  courts 
be  left  to  set  judicial  limits  to  practical  methods,  the 
methods  themselves,  if  they  are  to  grapple  successfully 
with  these  powerful,  abnormal  conditions  of  commerce, 
and  bring  them  back  to  conditions  of  proximate  justice, 
must  be  allowed  to  shape  themselves  freely  to  the  task 
which  confronts  them.  The  Commission 'should  rest  on 
its    own    basis,   be   left    to  do  effectively   its   own   work, 


400  civics. 

with  no  appeal  to  the  courts  save  that  which  comes  with 
the  ordinary  redress  of  wrongs. 

The  English  Board  of  Trade  acts  directly  in  defining 
and  enforcing  rates.  The  Commission,  instead  of  being 
a  body  whose  main  function  is  to  give  good  opinions, 
should  be  one  whose  duty  it  is  to  bring  order  out  of 
confusion,  and  to  give  relatively  uniform  conditions  of 
traffic  all  over  our  great  land.  The  Commission  should 
stand  for  the  executive  force  of  the  nation,  resting  back 
on  the  legislative  body,  and  be  no  more  dependent  on  the 
judiciary  than  any  other  administrative  branch. 

The  wrongs  done  to  employees  which  are  most  di- 
rectly referrible  to  management  are  the  occasionally 
excessive  prolongation  of  the  hours  of  labor;  the  con- 
tinuity of  labor  during  the  entire  week  ;  the  unneces- 
sary dangers  to  which  train-hands  are  exposed.  The 
number  of  employees  killed  in  1893  were  2,727;  the 
number  injured  were  31,729.  One  employee  was  killed 
in  every  320  men  ;  one  injured  in  every  28  men.  The 
chief  reasons  of  these  accidents  are  needlessly  danger- 
ous couplings  and   hand-brakes. 


ASSUMPTION   OF  NE)V  DUTIES.  401 


CHAPTER  VI. 
NEW    DUTIES   EST    THE    STATE. 

§  1.  The  third  direction  indicated  in  which  the  state 
should  respond  to  ever-unfolding  social  relations  is  a 
willingness  to  accept  new  duties.  As  society  develops, 
new  points  of  pressure  and  of  danger  arise.  Various 
forms  of  enterprise  gather  force  and  assume  an  inimical 
bearing.  These  dangers  spring  up  without  observation, 
and  in  general  ignorance  of  the  causes  at  work.  It  be- 
longs to  the  state,  making  a  discovery  of  these  altered 
circumstances,  to  readjust  its  lines  of  protection  to  them, 
to  change  front  to  meet"  the  altered  relations  between 
man  and  man,  class  and  class.  It  does  not  belong  to 
the  state  to  hold  blindly  to  effete  methods.  Nor  does  it 
do  to  say  that  the  state  is  inadequate  for  this  work. 
We  must  make  it  adequate  at  our  peril.  It  is  our 
organ  of  defence,  and  we  have  no  other. 

In  the  last  half -century,  England  has  quite  faced 
about  in  reference  to  the  social  interests  that  demand 
protection.  It  has  taken  a  wider  and  better  view  of  its 
functions  and  obligations.  Much  time  is  consumed  in 
seeing  and  in  accepting  altered  relations,  and  in  enter- 
ing on  the  forms  of  action  suited  to  them.  These 
changes  are  always  resisted,  because  they  are  in  re- 
straint of  those  for  the  moment  most  active  and 
aggressive.  Civil  reform  and  those  moral  readjust- 
ments   which    carry  with  them  new  customs   and    new 


402'  CIVICS. 

security  must  proceed  together.  "We  can  deny  neither 
branch  of  the  correction. 

The  first  examine  we  offer  of  an  altered  attitude  on 
the  part  of  the  state  is  that  of  an  extension  of  oversight, 
securing  a  just  dependence  of  the  agents  of  production 
on  each  other.  The  one  characteristic  of  our  time, 
looked  at  in  its  productive  methods,  is  combination,  the 
accumulation  of  great,  well-nigh  irresistible,  power  in 
the  hands  of  a  few  persons,  with  a  corresponding  de- 
pendence of  large  numbers  upon  them  for  the  means  of 
subsistence.  The  state,  in  giving  birth  to  that  fiction 
of  law,  a  corporation  acting  as  one  person,  has  itself 
been  the  chief  agent  in  securing  this  change.  The  social 
defences  of  our  time  that  are  wise  and  well  placed  mast 
lie'  between  those  possessed  of  power  on  the  one  hand, 
and  citizens  at  large  on  the  other,  open  to  their  in- 
vasion. We  can  no  longer  assume  an  essential  equality 
of  advantages  ;  we  can  no  longer  leave  a  single  man, 
confronted  in  whatever  direction  he  turns  with  powerful 
combinations,  to  fight  out  his  own  unaided  1  tattle. 

The  most  recent  form  which  these  combinations  have 
assumed,  and  one  that  has  grown  with  great  rapidity, 
is  that  of  trusts.  Wre  have  reached  this  completion  of 
a  tendency,  which  lay  in  the  facts  with  which  we  were 
dealing,  by  successive  steps ;  agreements  among  produ- 
cers as  to  prices,  the  tacit  acceptance  of  prices  as  estab- 
lished by  the  strong  business  firms,  pools,  corners,  the 
sale  of  weaker  plants  to  the  holders  of  stronger  ones 
followed  by  a  lease  to  the  original  owner,  and,  last  of 
all,  the  well-organized  trust. 

In  the  trust  proper,  owners  and  stockholders  sur- 
render their  claims  and  stock  to  trustees.     These  trus- 


TRUSTS.  403 

tees  hold  the  certificates  of  ownership,  and  issue,  in 
turn,  certificates  which  express  the  claims  upon  them. 
The  formal  ownerhip  rests  in  them.  They  control  the 
several  plants,  regulate  the  production,  and  fix  prices. 
They  receive  the  profits,  and  distribute  the  dividends 
under  the  claims  against  them.1 

The  object  of  the  trust  is  to  give  to  the  combination 
its  most  extended,  permanent,  and  complete  form,  with- 
out superseding  the  various  corporations  included  in  it. 
The  corporations,  as  direct  creations  of  law,  are  more 
tangible  than  the  trust,  and  more  readily  brought 
under  definite  legal  regulation.  The  trust  stands  back 
of  them,  a  shadowy  presence  whose  power  is  absolute, 
but  whose  public  responsibilities  are  obscure  and  impal- 
pable. It  is  not  necessary  to  success  that  a  trust  should 
include  all  the  producers  in  a  given  branch  of  business. 
If  it  represents'  a  strongly  preponderating  interest, 
other  producers  may  find  it  to  their  advantage  to  con- 
cede the  lead,  and  to  enter  quietly  into  the  advanced 
prices.  It  is  only  those  who  insist  on  competition  that 
the  trust  is  compelled  to  put  down. 

§  2.  The  causes  which  have  given  rise  to  trusts  are 
of  a  striking  and  urgent  character.  While  the  ever- 
returning  desire  of  monopoly  may  lie  at  the  bottom 
of  them,  it  has  been  called  out  by  many  justifying  cir- 
cumstances. Over-production  in  machine  products  has 
resulted  for  more  than  twenty  years  in  fluctuating 
prices  and  heavy  losses.  These  urgent  dangers  have 
prepared  producers  for  heroic  and  unscrupulous  meth- 
ods.    The   pressure  has  been  much  enhanced  by  stock 

1  E.   B.    Andrews,    Quarterly    Journal    of   Economics,  vol.    iii 
p.  117. 


404  CIVICS. 

companies,  with  costly  plants,  which  could  not  well  be 
allowed  to  lie  idle,  and  whose  capital  could  not  be  re- 
covered. It  is  for  the  interest  of  these  large  establish- 
ments, whose  stockholders  are  not  seriously  disturbed 
by  absence  of  dividends,  to  continue  production,  force 
an  issue,  drive  the  weak  to  the  wall,  and  recoup  them- 
selves when  the  field  is  their  own. 

This  temper,  reckless  and  immoral,  is  enhanced  by 
the  extreme  danger,  by  the  speculative  methods  which 
convert  trade  into  a  form  of  gambling,  and  by  a  growing 
conviction  that  commerce  under  competition  is  a  kind  of 
warfare,  in  which  cunning  and  unconscientious  ways  are 
in  order. 

These  results,  so  deeply  implanted  in  the  circum- 
stances, have  been  farther  accelerated  by  making  law 
itself  in  many  ways,  especially  in  the  form  of  protection, 
a  means  of  establishing  and  maintaining  artificial  and 
unequal  advantages.  Not  only  is  no  man  likely  to  resist 
such  an  accumulation  of  motives,  he  is  not  likely  to 
fathom  their  true  character,  or  to  regard  them  as  other 
than  inevitable  terms  which  he  must  accept  in  the 
struggle  for  life. 

The  facts  on  all  sides  disclose  ruinous  results,  results 
ruinous  to  any  honest  productive  methods,  and  to  any 
uniform  development  of  enterprise.  One-half  the  sugar 
refineries  in  operation  in  the  United  States  in  1875,  on 
the  seaboard,  have  failed.  The  flouring-mills  in  the 
United  States  were,  in  1884,  25,079.  In  1886  they  had 
been  reduced  by  6,812  ;  but  their  aggregate  capacity  had 
increased.  The  furnace  stacks  in  Ohio,  Indiana.  Illinois, 
Michigan,  and  Wisconsin  were  reduced  in  the  three 
years  following  1885,  from  139  to  134,  but  the  product 


TRUSTS.  405 

was  nearly  doubled.1  The  sudden  excess  of  production, 
with  the  crushing  pressure  in  the  market,  is  shown  by 
such  a  fact  as  this  :  400,000,000  yards  of  cotton,  in  1886, 
were  left  in  the  British  market. 

§  3.  Not  only  have  trusts  sprung  up  in  relief,  or  at 
least  in  mitigation,  of  this  intolerable  pressure,  carrying 
ruin  in  all  directions,  there  are  certain  important  ad- 
vantages incident  to  them.  It  is  a  gain  to  escape  from 
unreasonable  and  incalculable  competition,  a  gain  to 
secure  firmer  prices,  and  prices  more  nearly  fitted  to  the 
cost  of  production.  Production,  guided  by  a  trust  that 
surveys  the  entire  field,  may  not  only  be  better  fitted  in 
amount  to  the  wants  of  the  community,  it  may  also  be 
attended  with  less  cost.  Comprehensive  management  is 
favorable  to  skill,  economy,  invention,  and  is  sure  to 
save  much  labor  wasted  on  the  unfavorable  conditions 
and  reduplications  which  are  associated  with  many  in- 
dependent and  weak  producers.  Whatever  may  be  the 
gains  of  competition,  there  are  also  great  losses  asso- 
ciated with  its  unsystematized  and  conflicting  efforts. 
Advertising  alone,  in  itself  unproductive,  consumes  a 
very  appreciable  part  of  the  product. 

It  may  also  be  regarded  as  an  ultimate  gain  that  plants 
which  are  unfitted  to  render  the  best  service  are  slowly 
gotten  out  of  the  way.  It  was  found  in  Buffalo  that 
only  12  out  of  34  elevators  were  needed.  The  remain- 
ing 22  were  left  idle  under  combined  action.  Even 
thus  the  loss  was  less  than  that  which  would  have 
attended  on  their  use  and  slow  extinction.2  The  whiskey 
trust  reduced  83  distilleries  to  14  in  use. 

i  "Recent  Economic  Changes,"  \>\>.  us.  101,  140. 

2  Legislative  Report,  American  Economic  Association,  vol.  i  ]>.  1'.). 


406  civics. 

The  evils  which  have  attended  on  trusts,  extending* 
into  many  branches  of  business,1  have  hitherto  been 
far  more  conspicuous  than  their  benefits.  The  moral 
sense  of  the  community  has  been  greatly  reduced  by 
them.  They  have  been  active  in  introducing  and  ex- 
tending methods  subversive  of  all  kindly  and  just  rela- 
tions between  man  and  man.  The  reduction  of  prices, 
till  a  weak  competitor  is  driven  from  the  field,  followed 
by  an  advance  which  turns  transient  losses  into  gains 
is  a  method  no  more  contemplated  in  competition,  as 
an  economic  principle,  than  is  falsehood  or  theft.  No 
ways  are  better  fitted  to  harden  men  against  each  other, 
eradicate  human  sympathy,  and  subvert  ethical  law,  than 
those  by  which  trusts  have  been  built  up.  We  as 
much  need  an  effort  to  awaken  and  enforce  a  sense  of 
obligation  in  our  business  relations,  as  in  a  community 
whose  members  have  stolen  from  each  other  in  a  shame- 
less way,  or  robbed  each  other  by  violence.  The  Stan- 
dard Oil  Company  has  had  a  career  of  some  twenty-five 
years  or  more.  In  1870  it  was  planting  itself  in  Cleve- 
land. It  is  now  a  gigantic  monopoly  whose  wealth  and 
power  hardly  find  a  parallel.  This  position  has  been 
won  by  every  method  of  encroachment  possible  under 
the  law,  or  by  any  familiar  abuse  of  it,  or  by  its  secret 
violation.  It  has  respected  no  right  or  interest  which  it 
could  not  be  immediately  compelled  to  regard.  It  has 
subjected  the  railroads  to  its  interests,  constraining 
them  to  give  it  rates  so  unequal  as  to  destroy  the  possi- 
bility of  competition.  It  has  forced  them  to  pay  it  a 
portion  of  their  own  earnings,  secured   from  rivals   by 

1  An  enumeration  of  trusts  is  contained  in  "  Wealth  vs.  Common- 
wealth." 


TRUSTS.  407 

high  rates.  It  has  persecuted  more  obstinate  competi- 
tors by  costly  and  vexatious  law-suits.  It  has,  through 
its  agents  at  distributing  centres,  watched  the  destina- 
tion of  rival  oil,  and,  by  underbidding,  driven  it  from  the 
market.  It  stands  implicated  in  methods  directly  asso- 
ciated with  arson  and  murder.  It  has  so  far  corrupted 
legislation  as  to  restrain  competing  works  from  running 
their  pipes  under  railways  subservient  to  its  interests. 
It  has  bought  large  tracts  of  oil  territory  in  Ohio,  and 
held  back  the  produce  by  a  rate  of  15  cents  a  barrel, 
while  allowing  $1  a  barrel  for  oil  from  territory  it  was 
working  in  Pennsylvania.  Its  profits  in  1887  are  set 
down  at  120,000,000.  On  a  valuation  of  $7,740,000,  it 
paid  in  dividends,  in  1893,  $10,875,000.  On  $6,000,000 
it  issued  $90,000,000  of  stock  which  sold  for  $160,- 
000,000.  It  has  done  as  much  as  any  one  concern  well 
could  do  in  the  same  period  to  convert  trade  into  a 
secret,  aggressive,  irresponsible  conflict  between  man 
and  man,  and  to  subvert  all  the  conditions  of  honest  and 
prosperous  national  production.  This  is  to  disorganize 
society.1 

The  accumulation  of  enormous  wealth  in  the  hands 
of  a  few  by  methods  which  have  no  claim  to  be  called 
fair  tills  society  from  top  to  bottom  with  hatred  and 
strife.  Such  warfare  as  that  at  Homestead  is  but  a  sin- 
gle outbreak  of  fires  that  burn  fiercely  under  the  surface 
of  commercial  peace.  Democratic  government  is  for  the 
sake  of  democratic  society,  for  terms  of  prosperity  held 

1  Forum,  July,  1892;  "The  Railways  and  the  Republic,"  J.  F. 
Hudson,  p.  ill;  "The  Railway  Problem,"  p.  L35;  "  Monopolies  vs.  tbe 
People,"  Ch.  W.  Baker,  p.  21;  "Wealth  vs.  Commonwealth,"  H. 
D.  Lloyd,  pp.  :;:;,  U7,  82;  "Railway  Secrecy  and  Trusts,"  John  M. 
Bonham. 


408  civics. 

in  common.  "Free  institutions  are  of  value  in  the  meas- 
ure in  which  they  fulfil  their  function,  the  protection 
of  social  rights.  Scarcely  at  any  time  or  place  in  the 
world's  history  have  there  been  personal  advantages  so 
great  in  extent,  and  so  wrongfully  secured,  as  those 
that  have  been  gained  in  this  country  in  the  last  thirty 
years. 

The  history  of  trusts  is  much  the  same.  The  Sugar 
Trust  so  ruled  the  market  of  San  Francisco  that  refiner- 
ies could  not  be  established  in  the  Sandwich  Islands. 
By  an  agreement  running  five  years  the  producers  of 
sugar  in  the  Islands  were  admitted  to  that  market.  The 
Sugar  Trust,  in  case  of  annexation,  was  to  receive  one- 
half  the  bounty  paid  by  the  government.1  This  single 
trust  has  affected  powerfully  the  policy  of  the  nation. 

A  trust  rests  on  systematized  unfairness ;  it  subjects 
all  interests  to  its  own ;  it  encounters  free  commerce  as 
an  enemy.  The  American  Steel  Association  agreed  to 
sell  makers  of  steel  springs,  belonging  to  the  combina- 
tion, steel  at  $10  less  per  ton  than  to  others.  A  busi- 
ness of  many  departments,  like  the  making  of  carriages, 
may  be  controlled  by  an  advantage  gained  at  a  single 
point,  as  in  the  manufacture  of  wheels.  Sugar  refiners 
and  wholesale  dealers  formed  a  union  in  Canada  enabling 
them  to  raise  the  price  thirty  per  cent  on  outsiders.2 

It  is  not  easy  to  express  the  barbaric  temper  which 
invades  society  everywhere  under  these  unfair  relations 
which  have  come  to  be  looked  on  as  the  normal  growth 
of  commerce. 

Trusts,  in  the  way  in  which  they  are  now  ordered,  as 

1  The  Nation,  March  16,  1893. 

2  "  Monopolies  vs.  the  People,"  p.  76. 


TRUSTS.  409 

the  culmination  of  the  economic  movement,  smother  the 
moral  sense,  subvert  free  institutions,  and  subject  the 
masses  to  a  searching  and  inexorable  tyranny.  Under 
these  conditions  the  great  majority  would  be  born  into 
circumstances  almost  wholly  beyond  their  control.  They 
would  find  most  of  the  gifts  of  life  already  appropriated. 
Opportunities,  which  a  quarter  of  a  century  since  char- 
acterized us  as  a  nation,  are  fast  forsaking  us. 

The  ultimate  result  of  trusts,  fastened  upon  us  as  a 
permanent  method,  would  be  increased  profits  in  all 
trust  products,  with  corresponding  burdens  on  other 
products.  But  as  farmers,  workmen,  those  unable  to 
combine,  constitute  four-fifths  of  the  community,  this 
enhancement  of  prices  means  their  subjection  to  the  one- 
fifth.  M  irhinery,  in  its  introduction,  gave  occasion  to 
outrageous  abuses.  These  were  slowly  removed  by  civil 
law.  It  is  a  second  time  giving  rise  to  more  subtile  and 
extended  wrongs.  These,  in  turn,  must  be  confronted 
by  a  determined  spirit  of  correction.  If  we  suffer  a 
few  to  master  the  inventions  of  the  world,  instead  of 
subjecting  the  world  to  the  welfare  of  the  whole,  we 
shall  enslave  men  to  one  another. 

§  4.  Almost  all  recognize  the  evil  of  trusts ;  yet 
good  citizens  are  by  no  means  agreed  as  to  the  extent 
of  the  injury  or  its  remedy.  Some,  emphasizing  the 
fact  that  prices  have  not  been  greatly  advanced,  or  have 
in  a  few  instances  declined,  more  or  less  forgetful  of  the 
social  evils  involved  in  this  change,  and  thoroughly  pos- 
sessed by  the  theory  of  individualism,  have  insisted  that 
existing   remedies  are   sufficient.1     These    remedies  are 

1  "Legality  of  Trusts,"  Th.  W.  Dwight,  Political  Science  Quar- 
terly, vol.  iii.  p.  592. 


410  civics. 

economic  and  civic.  Under  economic  law,  it  is  asserted 
that  unusual  profits,  on  the  part  of  trusts,  will  again  call 
out  competition,  and  so  restore  the  previous  condition. 
But  the  facts  fail  to  confirm  this  view.  Immense 
wealth  has  been  heaped  up  by  trusts,  and  these  wrong- 
ful gains  have  simply  enabled  them  to  perfect  the 
policy  of  which  they  are  the  fruits.  Trusts  have  more 
frequently  driven  competition  from  the  field  than  has 
competition  driven  trusts. 

Trusts  can  be  attacked  under  common  law  as  conspir- 
acies to  raise  prices.  The  redress  thus  offered  is  wholly 
unsuited  to  remedy  the  wrong  inflicted.  The  ostensible 
purpose  of  a  trust  is  to  regulate,  not  to  raise,  prices. 
The  relation  of  its  action  to  prices,  simple  as  it  may  lie 
in  itself,  is  one  that  admits  of  endless  confusion  and 
litigation.  The  wealth  of  the  trust  is  sure  to  make  of 
the  law  a  convenient  weapon  of  defence  and  attack. 

Trusts,  in  their  complete  form,  have  not  been  con- 
ceded a  legal  footing.  It  was  decided  in  the  New 
York  courts,  in  the  case  of  the  Sugar  Trust,  that  cor- 
porations cannot  transfer  their  powers ;  that  they  can- 
not, therefore,  be  taken  into  a  more  comprehensive 
organization.  This  decision,  so  far  as  it  is  accepted 
and  enforced,  compels  a  new  method  of  action,  tends 
to  an  extension  of  corporate  union,  but  does  not  check 
the  movement  represented  in  trusts.  The  trust  falls 
back  one  step,  and  retains  the  form  of  a  corporation. 
The  existing  means  of  encountering  trusts  are  in  no 
May  commensurate  with  the  task.  To  rely  on  them  is 
to  allow  this  evil  tendency  to  complete  itself. 

There  is  one  measure  of  resistance  which  is  capable 
of  immediate  application,  and  one  which  would  in  some 


TRUSTS.  411 

cases  seriously  check  the  encroachment,  the  removal  of 
protective  duties  from  all  products  dealt  in  by  trusts. 
The  difficulty  in  applying  even  this  most  simple  and 
just  remedy,  as  in  the  case  of  the  Sugar  Trust,  shows 
how  strong  a  hold  these  bold,  attractive,  and  illegiti- 
mate methods  of  acquiring  wealth  have  on  the  minds 
of  many.  We  are  willing  to  build  up  combinations, 
like  the  Trenton  Pottery  Trust,  by  heavy  duties,  when 
they  turn  the  power  thus  secured  instautly  against  us 
in  reducing  wages  and  raising  prices. 

But  direct  and  suitable  as  this  relief  is,  it  does  not 
cover  the  ground.  Many  trusts,  like  the  Standard  Oil 
Trust,  or  the  Cotton-Seed  Oil  Trust,  or  the  Cattle  Trust, 
pertaining  to  commodities  of  domestic  production,  are 
independent  of  protection.  Trusts,  like  the  Copper 
Trust,  may  also  arise  in  connection  with  international 
products.  It  is  true  that  these  trusts  are  very  difficult 
in  formation  and  management,  and  may  issue  in  ex- 
tended disaster ;  but  the  speculative  ambitions  of  the 
business  world  set  so  strongly  in  this  direction,  that 
the  danger  involved  has  not  prevented  the  effort.  The 
great  gains  occasionally  achieved  by  trusts  intoxicate 
the  public  mind,  and  the  liabilities  of  failure  are  not 
duly  measured  either  in  narrow  or  wide  combinations. 

Laws  in  restraint  of  trusts  are  not  easily  devised, 
nor  readily  executed.  So  far  they  have  met  with  little 
success.  They  will  be  regarded  as  wise  or  unwise  ac- 
cording to  the  estimate  one  entertains  of  the  tendency 
expressed  in  trusts,  and  of  the  satisfactory  or  unsatis- 
factory character  of  the  results  reached  by  competition. 
If  we  look  upon  present  productive  conditions,  achieved 
under  what  has  been   regarded  as  economic  laws,  ade- 


412  civics. 

quate  to  themselves,  as  unbearable ;  if  we  regard  trusts 
in  one  aspect  of  them  as  an  inevitable  effort  to  escape 
by  foresight  and  combination  perpetual  fluctuations  and 
unavoidable  losses,  we  shall  distrust  an  effort  which 
simply  aims  to  drive  those  back  into  the  fire  who  have 
escaped  it,  though  surreptitiously.  What  we  choose  to 
call  competition,  a  struggle  between  the  weak  and  the 
strong  for  existence,  is,  in  the  later  stages  of  production, 
when  the  competitors  are  very  unequal,  a  blind  and  dis- 
astrous method  of  procedure.  It  precludes  sobriety  and 
honesty.  It  is  the  effort  of  an  eager  crowd  to  secure 
a  position  in  a  hall  not  able  to  contain  half  of  them. 
Some  powerful  rival,  like  the  Standard  Oil  Company, 
tramples  the  rest  under  foot. 

Is  it  not  wiser,  then,  to  accept  combination,  the  inev- 
itable product  of  our  time  and  of  the  organizing  pro* 
cesses  of  life,  to  allow  the  corporate  method  which  we 
have  created  with  so  much  complacency  its  natural  ex- 
pansion, and,  with  fresh  safeguards,  adjust  our  action 
to  it  ?  A  corporation  is  a  public  body.  It  is  not  en- 
titled to  the  privacy  or  the  liberty  of  an  individual.  It 
does  not  come  under  the  same  laws  or  restraints.  It  has 
officers,  who  hold  formal  and  legal  relation  to  it,  but  who 
cannot  respond  by  sympathy  to  social  sentiment  and  per- 
sonal obligations.  They  fulfil  a  duty  in  a  cold,  legal 
way.  Not  only  is  the  ethical  law  thus  held  in  suspense 
— the  corporation  conscienceless — but  the  economic  law 
is  much  modified.  Losses  are  less  severely  felt,  the 
powers  of  endurance  are  greater,  the  corporation  overtops 
and  overmasters  the  individuals  whom  it  encounters. 

The  state,  therefore,  which  confers  these  anomalous 
powers,  begets  these  legal  personalities  which  so  easily 


TRUSTS.  413 

develop  into  giants,  may  well  take  upon  itself  an  over- 
sight and  a  government  which  we  have  had  no  occasion 
to  associate  with  individual  effort.  Individualism  is  no 
longer  in  order,  because  we  are  not  dealing  with  indi- 
viduals. It  is  not  right  that  we  should  confer  im- 
mensely increased  powers,  and  give  no  additional  height 
and  strength  to  the  barriers  which  restrain  them.  We 
cannot  hold  on  to  the  old  method  when  its  essential  con- 
ditions have  passed  away.  Our  corporations  should  be 
subject  to  inspection  and  control  in  every  branch  of 
business,  for  ends  of  protection  and  taxation.  Lines  of 
activity  and  limits  of  activity  should  be  defined  for 
them,  with  that  elasticity  alone  which  is  consistent 
with  the  public  welfare.  If  Ave  are  not  willing  or  able 
to  do  this,  then  Ave  should  not  create  this  new  order  of 
things.  We  are  making  a  social  transition  from  less  to 
more  organization,  and  Ave  must  assume  new  duties.  If 
the  state  refuses  oversight,  and  at  the  same  time  puts 
perspicacious  and  unscrupulous  men  at  the  head  of  com- 
panies, regiments,  and  divisions  in  the  army  of  indus- 
try, the  community  is  sure  to  suffer  violence  and  to  be 
preyed  upon  in  the  entire  circle  of  its  rights.  The 
Arery  sense  of  commercial  right  is  soon  lost.  If  Ave  are 
to  retain  corporate  power,  our  present  great  instrument 
of  production,  we  must  learn  to  restrain  it  Avith  a 
strong,  even  hand.  Combination,  an  inevitable  incident 
of  progress,  must  be  accepted  and  brought  into  sub- 
mission to  our  common  life.  There  is  nothing  safe  in 
our  time  but  widespread  and  potent  intelligence,  system- 
atic and  thorough  action. 

1  "  Monopoly  vs.  the  People,"  p.  255;  "  State  Control  and  Corpora- 
tions and  Industries  in  Massachusetts,"  George  K.  Holmes,  Political 
Science  Quarter/;/,  vol.  v.  i>.  411. 


414  CIVICS. 

§  5.  A  second  example,  somewhat  akin  to  the  one 
jnst  given,  of  a  demand  on  the  state  to  accept  a  wider 
responsibility,  is  found  in  the  issuing  of  patents.  Pat- 
ents, in  themselves  a  wise  and  liberal  device,  have  suf- 
fered, in  their  development,  grievous  abuse.  They  have 
often  been  diverted  from  their  ostensible  object,  the 
reward  of  invention,  and  made  the  means  of  monopoly 
in  the  hands  of  those  who  have  given  little  heed  to  the 
claims  of  the  inventor.  Management,  which  we  are 
accustomed  to  call  capital,  has  gained  a  kind  of  omnip- 
otence which  enables  it  to  appropriate  much  of  the  re- 
ward designed  for  the  inventor.  The  inventor  does  not 
bring  his  invention  to  an  open  market.  He  deals  with 
a  few,  often  with  those  who  have  adverse  interests.  He 
can  do  nothing  by  himself,  and  is  frequently  pressed 
by  personal  wants.  The  result  is  that  but  a  small  por- 
tion of  that  advantage  which  the  law  designs  for  the 
inventor  reaches  him.  Most  of  it,  by  misdirection, 
passes  into  the  hands  of  the  manager,  who  has  ren- 
dered to  the  public  no  peculiar  service.  The  tax  falls 
on  the  community,  but  does  not  reach  its  ostensible 
object.  We  make  laws,  and  are  careless  whether  they 
fulfil  their  purpose.  Then  we  are  given,  as  a  correc- 
tion, another  dose  of  the  philosophy,  we  should  not 
make  laws. 

It  is  true  that  the  manager  contributes  to  the  success 
of  an  invention,  and  so  enters  into  its  advantages ;  but 
this  is  no  reason  why  the  law  should  be  allowed  to  mis- 
carry in  his  hands,  and  he  be  suffered  to  take  to  him- 
self, at  the  expense  of  the  public,  gains  by  no  means  his 
own.  If  we  are  to  leave  the  inventor  to  struggle  as 
he  may  with  those  who  are  willing  to  rob  him  of  his 


PATENTS.  415 

reward,  why  did  we  step  in  at  all  ?  This  struggle  went 
on  without  the  law,  and  we  interfered  to  make  sure  of 
the  success  of  the  inventor.  Why  should  we  leave  the 
work  half  done  ?  Why  should  we  allow  large  gains  to 
be  wrongfully  secured  at  our  own  cost  ?  Our  patent 
laws,  like  our  corporation  laws,  need  to  be  reshaped  to 
their  proper  ends,  need  to  be  enforced  in  full  view  of 
the  pertinacity  and  power  of  those  who  are  perverting 
them.  Men  who  are  eager  in  the  use  of  law  as  a 
means  of  creating  inequalities,  talk  in  a  very  inconse- 
quential way  of  the  futility  of  looking  to  law  for  aid 
when  the  purpose  is  to  secure  just  conditions  of  pro- 
duction. Zeal  is  not  wanting  in  wrenching  the  law 
from  its  real  service ;  it  only  fails  us  when  we  strive 
to  restore  it  to  its  true  position. 

Patent  laws  are  now  at  fault  in  allowing  unreason- 
able profits,  and  in  allowing  them  to  accrue  to  the  ben- 
efit of  those  who  have  appropriated,  not  rendered,  the 
service  rewarded  by  them.  It  is  said  that  the  gimlet- 
pointed  screw  has  been  worth  to  the  manufacturer 
$10,000,000.  One  may  keep  in  his  employ  an  inven- 
tive workman,  and  realize  from  his  ingenuity  more 
thousands  than  he  receives  hundreds.  A  large  busi- 
ness firm,  dealing  in  coffee,  owed  to  the  invention  of 
an  employee  a  method  of  doing  up  packages  that  saved 
them  annually  many  thousand  dollars.  The  Bell  Tele- 
phone Company,  in  the  years  1885-G-7,  made  profits 
ranging  from  110  to  116  per  cent.  When  a  renewal 
of  the  Howe  patent  on  sewing-machines  was  asked  for, 
it  was  shown  that  the  profits  had  already  reached  a  half 
million  dollars.  The  application  was  refused,  but  the 
period  of  patents  was  changed  from  fourteen  to  seven- 


416  CIVICS. 

teen  years.  The  present  method  of  rewarding  patents 
deliberately  neglects  results.  A  hand  is  put  into  a 
pocket  containing  gold,  silver,  and  copper  coins ;  many 
are  dropped  on  the  way  out,  and  what  chance  to  re- 
main are  given  to  the  claimant.  Under  an  outworn 
saw  about  justice,  a  bandage  is  tied  over  the  eyes  of 
a  public  servant  as  a  first  condition  of  action. 

A  second  abuse  to  which  patents  are  constantly  lead- 
ing, is  a  delay  in  issuing  patents,  and  an  interlocking  of 
patents,  so  as  to  secure,  for  a  period  much  longer  than 
the  law  contemplates,  a  given  line  of  business.  If  rob- 
bery can  only  be  gotten  under  the  forms  of  law  and  un- 
der the  ordinary  methods  of  business,  we  accept  it  with 
much  contentment. 

§  6.  A  third  direction  in  which  the  community  should 
be  ready  to  exercise  its  own  rights  is  found  in  our  mu- 
nicipalities, in  the  water-supply,  light-supply,  and  street 
railways.  The  imperative  reason  for  an,  assumption  of 
control  is  that  these  forms  of  business  are  natural  mo- 
nopolies, and  cannot  be  regulated  by  competition.  The 
work  can  be  done  perfectly  and  cheaply  by  one  s}'stem 
only,  covering  the  entire  area  under  consideration. 
These  branches  of  business  involve  also  an  occupation 
of  the  streets,  which  subjects  the  public  to  much  incon- 
venience, and  which  is  often  secured  and  attended  with 
much  corruption.  AVith  the  growth  of  population,  they 
become  franchises  of  great  value,  that  rest  as  a  per- 
manent monopoly  in  the  hand  of  powerful  corporations. 
If  there  is  any  plain  unearned  increment  which  the  pub- 
lic ought  not  to  throw  away,  with  the  double  injury  of 
its  own  loss  and  the  unequal  distribution  of  opportuni- 
ties, it  is  the  growth  in  value  of  these  public  appliances. 


GAS-SUPPLY.  417 

There  are  many  examples  in  this  country,  and  still 
more  abroad,  of  a  successful  and  profitable  rendering  of 
this  form  of  work  by  municipalities.  Philadelphia,  Rich- 
mond, Danville  (Va.),  Alexandria,  Henderson,  Wheeling, 
Bellefontaine,  Hamilton  (Canada),  furnish  their  own  gas. 
Most  of  these  cities  have  paid  for  their  works  out  of  the 
receipts,  while  furnishing  gas  at  rates  lower  than  those 
usual.  They  are  earning  from  five  to  twenty-five  per 
cent.1  The  success  of  these  and  like  undertakings  in 
some  foreign  cities,  notably  Birmingham,  is  marvellous, 
and  may  well  bring  to  us  a  sense  of  humiliation.2 

Much  corruption  is  escaped  by  the  assumption  of  these 
public  labors.  Strong  corporations,  securing  large  profits 
from  a  franchise  in  many  changeable  ways  interwoven 
with  public  interests,  become  sources  of  illicit  action  in 
their  entire  history.  They  purchase  advantages,  on  the 
one  side,  and  are  blackmailed  on  the  other. 

Over  against  these  gains  are  to  be  placed  the  possible 
mismanagement  and  corrupt  management  which  may 
attend,  and  in  this  country  often  do  attend,  on  public 
affairs.  Thus  it  has  been  said  that  2,000  unnecessary 
employees  are  attached,  for  political  purposes,  to  the  gas- 
works of  Philadelphia.3  The  arguments  against  munici- 
pal enterprises  seem  often  to  prove  the  exact  opposite 
of  what  they  are  intended  to  prove.  Our  excessive  and 
uncontrollable  individualism  has  made  us  incapable,  in 
a  high  degree,  of  honest,  effective,  combined  action.  The 
cultivation  of  one  power  has  lost  us  another  equally  valu- 

i  Prof.  E.  W.  Bemis,  Independent,  May  28,  1K'.>1 :  also  Monograph, 
by  tin'  same  author,  American  Economic  Association. 
^  ••  English  Social  Movements,"  p.  71. 
3  Frank  Morrison,  l-'urmn,  August,  1892. 


418  CIVICS. 

able  power.  "We  need  more  of  that  drill  under  public 
duties  which  is  the  strength  of  such  a  nation  as  Prussia.1 
We  are  like  excellent  but  raw  recruits  in  an  army ;  Ave 
are  impatient  of  the  discipline  which  can  alone  fully  de- 
velop our  powers.  To  surrender  military  tactics  is  as 
fatal  to  the  highest  success  as  to  crush  out  individual 
energy.  The  organization  of  society,  though  freer  than 
that  of  an  army,  is  none  the  less  an  organization  with 
organic  claims. 

Our  municipal  governments  are  breaking  down  — 
measurably  in  the  case  of  Philadelphia  —  because  every 
man  has  been  trained  under  individualism,  every  man  is 
in  search  of  his  own,  and  few  are  ready  to  render  con- 
scientious work  to  the  public.  In  no  civilized  nation  is 
there  less  sense  of  responsibility  to  the  public  welfare 
than  in  many  of  our  cities.  This  is  the  ugly  reverse  of 
that  individualism  in  whose  obverse,  of  independent 
activity,  we  are  so  delighted.  What  matters  it  as  proof 
that  Philadelphia  cannot  order  her  gas-works  honestly  ? 
She  can  do  nothing  honestly.  The  dishonesty  in  this 
single  undertaking  is  simply  a  corollary  of  the  dishonesty 
everywhere,  and  the  general  dishonesty  expresses  the 
general  failure  to  accept  public  responsibilities.  This 
want  of  honesty  is  striking  much  deeper  than  the  man- 
agement of  gas-works.  What  we  most  urgently  need  as 
a  people  is  the  mastery  of  intelligent,  responsible,  collec- 
tive action.  This  is  a  lesson  in  harmony  with  our  age, 
and  in  harmony  with  our  free  institutions.  We  are 
learning  it  for  all  purposes  of  personal  acquisition,  and 

1  "The  people  of  the  United  States  have  a  larger  share  of  admin- 
istrative awkwardness  than  any  other  civilized  population,"  Amos  G. 
Warner,  American  charities,  p.  174. 


INDIVIDUALISM.  419 

unlearning  it  in  all  that  pertains  to  the  public  welfare. 
We  confront  an  overwhelming  monopolistic  temper  with 
an  individualism  that  leaves  us  free  to  unite  against  the 
public  welfare,  and  with  little  or  no  power  to  combine  in 
its  behalf.  We  plead  the  business  sagacity  with  which 
private  enterprises  are  carried  on,  and  forget  the  extent 
to  which,  by  means  of  them,  wealth  is  accumulated  in 
the  hands  of  a  few,  one  per  cent  of  the  people  holding 
as  much  wealth  as  the  remaining  ninety-nine  per  cent. 
Have  we  any  right  to  boast  of  an  activity  so  directed  ? 
Nor  can  we  be  properly  told  to  honestly  order  primary 
functions  before  we  add  needlessly  to  them.  The  exact- 
ing, eager  individualism  which  we  are  confronting  is  in 
a  large  degree  the  cause  of  this  corruption  and  weakness. 
It  is  in  the  water,  not  out  of  it,  that  we  are  to  learn 
to  swim.  The  future  belongs  not  to  an  individualism 
which  disintegrates  society  by  ever-widening  conflicts 
and  subverts  the  conditions  of  our  common  life,  but  to 
an  organic  force  that  compacts  and  harmonizes  all  powers 
in  the  pursuit  of  common  purposes.  We  despise  the 
skill  with  which  Prussia  perfects  the  public  service,  and 
yet  there  is  a  point  of  view  from  winch  it  ranks  much 
higher  than  our  individualism,  which  breaks  down  in 
weakness  and  corruption  the  moment  we  assign  it  any 
worthy  task.1  We  ought  to  husband  the  resources  of 
our  cities,  if  for  no  other  end  than  that  of  winning  the 
power  of  self-government. 

It  may  be  said  that  many  of  these  undertakings  are, 
in  their  earlier  stages,  unprofitable,  and  that  we  shall 
subject  the  public  to  unnecessary  losses  or  unnecessary 

1  "Railroad  Policy  of  Prussia,"  GustavCohn,  Jourrial  of  Political 
Economy,  vol.  i.  p.  179. 


420  civics. 

delay  in  developing  them.  This  is  time  American  rea- 
soning. It  is  of  no  moment,  if  the  public  shifts  its 
losses  onto  the  individual  ;  it  is  of  no  moment  if  the  in- 
dividual thrives  at  the  expense  of  the  public.  We  are 
forever,  in  our  democracy,  antagonizing  the  two  sets  of 
interests  which  we  ought  to  be  forever  uniting.  No- 
where is  the  public  subjected  with  less  scruple  to  all  the 
shifty  tendencies  of  personal  competition  than  with  us. 
If  an  individual  can  afford  to  take  the  risks  of  a  street 
railway,  still  more  can  the  public  whom  it  accommodates. 
We  shall  have  no  sound  moral  sense  in  reference  to  our 
collective  interests,  till  we  distinctly  take  them  up  on 
their  own  basis. 

The  same  reasons  which  apply  to  street  railways 
apply  in  a  less  degree  to  telegraphs.  A  very  valuable 
franchise  has  been  placed  by  us  in  private  hands,  and 
subjected  to  monopoly.  The  country  is  everywhere 
perplexed  and  disfigured  by  unsightly  and  inadequate 
telegraph  poles.  The  use  of  the  telegraph  is  far  less 
general  than  it  might  be.  The  telegraph,  like  the  post- 
office,  should  be  an  instrument  of  the  national  life. 
The  English,  most  like  us  in  social  temper,  have  ac- 
cepted this  service  and  are  successfully  performing  it. 

Answer  will  be  made,  "  Herein  lies  the  mischief  of 
the  reasoning.  We  are  started  with  the  modest  under- 
taking of  a  street  railroad,  and  we  bring  up  in  labors 
that  cover  a  continent.  This  is  but  a  prelude  to  the  as- 
sumption by  the  state  of  railways,  and  so  the  mighty 
project  grows,  till  the  power  of  the  individual  falls  into 
its  shadow  and  disappears." 

Social  strength,  in  the  end,  must  be  found  in  an  equi- 
librium of  the  two  tendencies,  individualism  and  collec- 


INDIVIDUALISM.  421 

tivism.  We  are  suffering .  grievously  by  the  excess  of 
one  of  them.  Whatever  danger  may  come  to  us  from 
Socialism,  will  arise  from  an  unreasonable  resistance  to 
the  organic  force  which  is  pushing  into  our  lives.  No 
principle,  however  sound,  can  be  applied  blindly  and  uni- 
versally. Growth  must  have  its  way.  To  refuse  to 
walk  lest  we  should  be  compelled  to  run,  or  to  run  lest 
we  should  be  forced  to  fly,  is  not  reason,  and  prepares 
the  way  for  that  violence  which  we  most  dread. 

Many  sound  reasons  can  be  given  why  railroads 
should  be  public  highways,  but  the  undertaking  is 
beyond  our  present  attainments.  •  We  are  being  schooled 
by  the  effort  to  regulate  them,  and  it  is  well  for  us  to 
accept  that  discipline  till  it  leads  us  to  a  finish.  All 
that  we  have  urged  is  simply  a  slow,  empirical  exten- 
sion of  public  activity  into  fields  nearest  to  it,  till  we 
gain  the  power  and  the  spirit  of  united  effort,  and  can 
confront  once  more  the  force  of  our  individual  life  with 
the  force  of  our  collective  life.  Individualism  alone  is 
tyranny,  and  far  more  when  it  is  the  individualism  of  a 
class  of  men  than  of  one  man. 


422  civics. 


CHAPTER  VII. 
THE    STATE    IN    THE   EXERCISE    OF    ITS    EIGHTS. 

§  1.  A  fourth  consideration  in  Sociology  is  the 
manner  in  which  the  state  exercises  its  rights.  The 
most  constant  and  comprehensive  right  of  the  state  is 
the  right  to  support.  It  expresses  itself  in  taxation. 
Taxes  are  products,  services,  or  credits  taken  from  its 
subjects  by  the  state  for  its  own  uses;  "contributions 
imposed  by  the  government  on  individuals  for  the  ser- 
vice of  the  state." ]  The  interests  of  the  individual 
and  the  state,  widely  contemplated,  are  identical.  The 
conflict,  so  conspicuously  developed  in  taxation,  is  due 
to  the  method  of  taxation,  to  wasteful  expenditure,  and 
to  a  disposition,  on  the  part  of  the  citizen,  to  shirk  his 
own  proper  burden.  Taxes  that  are  laid  for  fitting 
purposes,  that  are  judiciously  imposed  and  prudently 
expended,  commend  themselves  as  completely  to  sound 
reason  as  any  class  of  outlays  whatever.  It  is  a  griev- 
ous social  wrong  that  the  true  temper  of  society  should 
be  so  utterly  reversed  in  taxation ;  that  a  sense  of 
evasion,  unfairness,  and  injury  should  pervade  it  every- 
where ;  that  the  very  pursuit  of  justice  should  be 
characterized  as  "  academic." 

While  there  is  an  unreason  in  men  that  may  explain  a 
part  of  it,  the  chief  ground  of  this  hatred  of  taxes  is 

1  Definition  of  Webster  and  Story,  Judge  Miller's  Lectures  on 
the  Constitution  of  the  United  States. 


TAXATION.  423 

the  unfairness  with  which  they  have  been  laid.  The 
exemption  of  the  nobility  and  clergy  in  France,  prior  to 
the  Revolution,  a  most  important  provoking  cause  of 
that  outbreak,  was  only  an  extreme  form  of  methods 
almost  universal.  Taxes  still  fall  heavily  on  the  poor, 
as  contrasted  with  the  rich.  If,  in  our  own  country  we 
were  to  divide  citizens  into  the  rich,  the  well-to-do,  the 
comfortable,  and  the  poor,  the  burden  of  taxation  would 
be  found  to  rest  chiefly  on  the  two  lower  classes.  Sev- 
enty-live per  cent  of  the  savings  of  labor  is  taxed  as 
against  three  per  cent  of  wealth.1  Ninety-seven  in  one 
hundred  pay  three-fourths  the  taxes  and  own  less  than 
one-third  the  property.2  It  has  been  affirmed  that  the 
balance  between  the  poor  and  the  rich  in  this  country  is 
altered  each  year  to  the  extent  of  one  billion  dollars  by 
the  form  of  taxation. 

The  money  raised  in  this  unequal  way  has  been  ex- 
pended with  great  prodigality.  Pensions  have  been 
conceded  not  only  to  those  abundantly  able  to  care  for 
themselves,  but  even  to  the  affluent,  and  to  those  whose 
service  would  bear  no  inquiry. 

Honesty,  honor,  patriotism,  have  been  habitually  and 
extendedly  sacrificed  by  the  citizen  in  evading  taxation, 
each  evasion  making  it  more  unjust.  One  occupied  with 
taxes  in  Ohio  said,  "There  is  not  a  rich  man  in  Ohio 
who  has  not  perjured  himself."  "  In  a  struggle  between 
conscience  and  interest  in  good  men,  interest  wins."3 
Though  this   assertion   may  be  often  true  in  other  di- 

i  "Federal  Taxes  and  State  Expenses,"  Wm.  II.  Ives,  p.  123. 

2  "  Henry  George's  Mistakes,"  Th.  G.  Shearman,  Forum,  vol.  viii. 
p.  40;  "The  Coining  Billionaire,"  Fofium,  vol.  x.  p.  540. 

3  "Economic  Interpretation  of  History,"  p.  4tio. 


424  civics. 

rections,  it  is  pre-eminently  true  in  connection  with 
taxes.  Oaths  which  the  state  imposes  are  little  heeded. 
The  reason  of  this  lies  in  a  bad  past,  and  in  a  present 
so  vicious  in  method  as  to  be  incapable  of  anything 
approaching  justice.  Men's  morals  on  this  subject  have 
been  formed  in  the  worst  of  all  schools,  that  of  habitual 
injustice.  Farmers  in  France  before  the  Ee volution 
paid  four-fifths  of  their  income  in  taxes.1  Concealment 
and  falsehood  were  their  only  weapons  of  defence.  The 
hereditary  taint  of  wrong  is  still  with  us,  when  circum- 
stances are  greatly  altered.  Taxes  still  remain  in  many 
countries,  and  pre-eminently  with  us,  on  so  unsound  and 
so  unequal  a  basis,  that  the  sense  of  right  is  constantly 
shocked  and  seems  finally  to  utterly  give  way.  No  fair 
appeal  can  be  made  to  patriotism  in  connection  with 
them.  A  candid  and  honest  temper  is  punished  by 
undue  impositions.  Truth  oftentimes  makes  the  com- 
plex result  more  unjust  than  it  otherwise  would  be. 

The  underlying  principles  of  taxation  have  not  been 
so  presented  and  applied  as  to  appeal  to  the  general 
conscience,  and  lay  upon  it  a  fair,  uniform  law.  Social 
and  ethical  development  are  both  crude.  Men  as  citi- 
zens fall  below  themselves  as  men. 

§  2.  The  four  rules  of  Adam  Smith  have  been  spoken 
of  as  inadequate  and  "  trivial,"  and  yet  they  contain  a 
fundamental  idea,  and  important  particulars  under  it.2 
Briefly  they  are,  that  subjects  should  pay  according  to 
their  ability ;  that  the  amount,  time,  and  manner  of 
payment  should  be  fixed  ;  that  the  convenience  of  the 

1  "  The  History  of  the  Eighteenth  Century  in  England,"  vol.  v. 
p.  380. 

2  "  Political  Economy,"  F.  A.  Walker,  p.  489. 


TAX  A  T10N.  425 

taxpayers  should  be  considered  ;  that  the  state  should 
take  as  little  as  possible  beyond  the  sum  which  reaches 
the  treasury.  These  rules  may  be  made  more  explicit, 
and  supplemented  by  other  rules,  but  they  themselves 
will  be  heeded  in  every  good  system  of  taxation. 

The  word  taxation  more  frequently  directs  the  mind 
to  money  contributions  for  the  support  of  the  state. 
The  primary  principle  of  this  contribution  is  that  it 
should  be  according  to  ability,  according  to  one's  com- 
mand of  wealth.  This  principle  meets  the  notion 
of  justice,  equality  between  citizens.  The  comparison 
pertinent  to  the  case  lies  between  burdens  and  the  power 
to  bear  them.  A  caravan  is  well  loaded  when  each 
animal  is  assigned  a  pack  according  to  its  strength. 
Tasks  are  fairly  laid  when  they  consume  proximately 
equal  portions  of  time  and  labor. 

The  principle  is  not  only  just,  as  between  citizens  ;  it 
is  right.  Ability  measures  obligation.  We  are  under 
obligation  to  sustain  the  state  according  to  our  ability  to 
sustain  it.  This  principle  is  applicable,  and  the  only 
principle  applicable,  to  other  forms  of  service.  Some 
communities  have  required  of  their  citizens  the  perform- 
ance of  the  duties  of  offices  to  which  they  had  been 
chosen,  and  we  at  once  feel  the  want  of  patriotism  in 
refusing  appropriate  positions  of  trust.  Military  service, 
by  far  the  heaviest  burden  of  all,  is  laid  exclusively, 
and  often  laid  imperatively,  under  this  principle  of 
ability.  The.  fact  is  the  more  significant  as  this  very 
unwelcome  duty  falls  chiefly  to  the  able-bodied  poor. 
If,  when  we  are  dealing  with  the  poor,  we  unhesitat- 
ingly apply  the  principle  of  ability,  what  reason  have 
we  for  not   adhering  to   the   same   principle   when  the 


426  CIVICS. 

relatively  lighter  burdens  of  the  rich  are  under  con- 
sideration ? 

This  principle  will  also  produce  the  most  harmony, 
good-will,  and  patriotism  among  citizens.  Taxes  ill- 
advised  and  unequal  beget  restlessness,  resentment,  eva- 
sion, and  social  weakness.  Just  wars,  as  in  our 
Kevolution,  break  down  especially  under  unequal  taxa- 
tion. A  tax  that  is  closely  associated  with  ability  is  more 
likely  to  fall  on  luxuries  than  on  necessities,  on  expendi- 
ture than  on  capital.  Thus  the  community  is  less 
pressed  and  less  harassed.  It  feels  confidence  within 
itself  in  its  own  spirit  and  methods.  The  poor  are,  as  a 
mle,  more  patriotic  than  the  rich,  simply  because  they 
are  accustomed  to  bear  burdens  uncomplainingly. 

This  principle  of  ability  best  combines  and  reconciles 
other  principles.  It  is  asserted  that  taxes  should  be 
proportioned  to  expenditure,  because  expenditure  is  an 
indication  of  power.  The  principle  is  thus  identified 
with  that  of  ability,  but  is  stated  in  a  narrower  and  less 
guarded  way.  It  is  also  urged  that  taxes,  thrown  on 
expenditure,  rest  on  the  unproductive  resources  of  the 
community.  This  is  equally  true  whether  the  tax  fol- 
lows outlay  or  follows  ability,  unless  the  outlay  has 
become  prodigal.  To  undertake  to  pursue  and  chastise 
this  vice  by  taxation  is  to  divert  taxation  from  its  proper 
purpose,  to  make  its  returns  uncertain,  and  to  involve  it 
in  endless  perplexities.  We  shall  never  succeed  in  mak- 
ing a  state  strong  by  relying  for  support  on  the  vices  of 
its  citizens. 

Another  principle  offered  is,  leave-them-as-you-find- 
theni.  Do  not  cripple  the  subject  as  a  productive  agent 
by  taxation.     This  principle  is  best  complied  with  by 


TAXATION.  427 

proportioning  taxes  to  the  power  to  bear  them.  Taxes 
thus  take  what  can  be  most  readily  spared.  It  hardly 
imposes  any  other  caution  except  the  caution  of  not  lay- 
ing a  tax  that  will  fall  on  a  productive  process  in  such 
a  way  as  to  needlessly  embarrass  it. 

A  principle  that 'has  a  show  of  justice  is,  that  taxes 
should  be  proportioned  to  the  protection  given  the  citi- 
zen by  the  state ;  and  are  to  be  looked  on  as  pay  for 
this  safety.  This  principle  is  incapable  of  any  exact 
application.  The  state  cannot  put  a  price  on  every 
service  it  renders ;  it  cannot  even  trace  services,  much 
less  attach  a  fee  to  them.  This  principle,  made  general 
and  practical,  is  on  the  whole  concurrent  with  that  of 
ability.  Some  think  that  the  services  of  the  law  are 
chiefly  extended  to  "  the  poor  and  the  weak  ;  women 
and  children  and  the  aged ;  the  infirm,  the  ignorant, 
and  the  indigent." x  "  If  we  wanted  to  estimate  the 
degree  of  benefit  which  different  persons  derive  from 
the  protection  of  government,  we  should  have  to  con- 
sider who  would  suffer  most  if  that  protection  were 
withdrawn.  .  .  .  Those  would  suffer  most  who  were 
weakest  in  mind  and  body." 2 

These  assertions  are  made  plausible  by  an  enumera- 
tion of  the  wrongs  to  which  the  weak  and  poor  are  ex- 
posed in  a  barbarous  or  semi-civilized  state  of  society. 
But  this  is  not  a  wise  or  just  statement  of  the  case. 
The  poor  are  equally  entitled  with  the  rich  to  the 
ethical  gains  of  society.  Governments  in  enlightened 
communities   are   not   engaged    in    protecting   the    poor 

i  "  Political  Economy,"  F.  A.  Walker,  p.  t'.ni. 
-  John  Stuart  Mill,  quoted  in  "Taxation  in  American  States  and 
Cities,"  R.  T.  Ely,  p.  239. 


428  civics. 

from  slavery.  That  danger  has  passed  by,  precisely 
as  the  need  of  a  bounty  on  wolves.  One  cannot  say  to 
a  laborer,  You  should  be  willing  to  work  for  me  for  a 
dollar  a  day,  for  my  ancestors  compelled  your  ancestors 
to  work  for  them  for  nothing.  It  is  a  strange  inver- 
sion of  things  to  say,  the  poor  should  bear  the  larger 
share  of  the  burdens  of  the  state,  for  if  it  were  not  for 
the  state,  we  would  make  them  bear  still  more.  The 
primary  office  of  the  state  is  to  protect  them  against 
us.  The  existing  condition  of  things  is  a  great  let-up 
for  which  they  ought  to  pay  roundly. 

Moreover,  in  those  earlier  days  of  violence,  the  rich 
were  still  more  exposed  than  the  poor  to  plunder.  It 
was  not  the  man  of  wealth,  but  the  warrior,  that  had 
the  upper  hand.  It  was  he  that  toasted  at  his  brazier 
the  feet  of  the  Isaacs  and  Jacobs,  wringing  money  from 
them. 

The  real  question  between  the  rich  and  the  poor  to- 
day under  this  principle  of  protection  is,  To  whom  is 
the  state  actually  rendering  the  largest  service  ?  The 
state  brings  safety  to  person,  to  property,  to  all  forms 
of  social  life  and  enjoyment.  To  whom  does  it  bring 
the  most  assured  safety  with  the  largest  outlay  ?  Cer- 
tainly to  the  rich.  How  long  was  it  that  women  in 
mines  and  children  in  factories  were  without  the  first 
terms  of  safety  ?  How  devoid  to-day  are  the  lower 
classes,  the  children  and  wives  of  inebriates,  sewing 
women,  of  protection  ?  How  frequently  do  crimes  in 
our  large  cities,  directed  against  the  very  poor,  go  un- 
punished ?  The  poor  make  very  little  claim  for  per- 
sonal protection,  and  receive  still  less. 

When  we  are  considering  the  safety  of  property,  it 


TAXATION.  429 

is  certainly  fair  to  say  that  the  protection  extended  to 
it  is  valuable  in  the  measure  of  that  property,  and  in 
the  degree  in  which  its  safety  depends  on  the  law.  It 
is  thus  we  regulate  the  fees  of  insurance.  The  prop- 
erty of  the  poor  is  not  as  well  protected  as  the  property 
of  the  rich,  and  it  is  much  less  difficult  of  protection. 
All  the  costly  suits  at  law  are  carried  on  in  defining 
and  defending  some  obscure  claim  between  the  rela- 
tively well-to-do. 

If  we  turn  to  the  aid  rendered  by  the  state  in  estab- 
lishing commerce,  highways,  postal  service,  we  see  at 
once  that  the  advantage  the  citizen  receives  from  them 
is  closely  associated  with  his  Wealth.  The  poor  man 
writes  an  occasional  letter,  the  rich  man  loads  the  mail 
daily.  If  we  take  that  very  exceptional  gift,  public 
instruction,  we  still  find  that  intermediate  and  higher 
education  are  far  more  expensive  than  primary  educa- 
tion, and  that,  as  the  cost  increases,  the  service  is 
chiefly  rendered  to  the  well-to-do.  This  most  benefi- 
cent service  of  all  is  largely   performed  for  the  rich. 

Our  legislatures  are  chiefly  occupied  with  interests 
that  primarily  concern  the  rich,  our  courts  with  enfor- 
cing their  claims,  and  our  armies  and  navies  in  main- 
taining rights  with  which  they  are  identified.  The 
pour  pay  the  chief  penalty  of  war,  and  catch  its  pas- 
sion second-hand.  When  a  nation  adopts  such  a  policy 
as  that  of  protection,  the  primary  impulse  to  it  is  with 
1  Ik isc  productively  strong.  The  two  principles,  then, 
of  ability  and  service  rendered,  are  not  antagonistic,  but 
strikingly  concurrent. 

Still  another  principle  offered  as  a  guide  to  taxation 
is,  equality  of  sacrifice.     Here,   again,  we   have  some- 


430  civics. 

thing  very  like  identity.  If  ability  means  true  ability, 
that  is,  permanent  ability,  ability  in  excess  of  claims, 
the  two  principles  at  once  coalesce.  An  income  de- 
rived from  accumulated  capital  and  one  dependent  on 
personal  labor  express  different  degrees  of  power.  Two 
equal  incomes,  the  one  charged  with  the  support  of  a 
household  and  the  other  accruing  to  a  single  person, 
express  different  ability.  An  income  of  $10,000  has 
more  than  double  the  capacity  of  endurance  compared 
with  one  of  $5,000. 

Taxation  can  only  occupy  itself  with  rough,  practical 
measurements  of  power.  An  effort  to  follow  all  the 
increments  in  the  growth  of  wealth  is  at  once  a  very 
difficult  and  a  very  dangerous  undertaking.  Any  ex- 
cess in  the  imposition  of  taxes  tends  to  repress  pro- 
duction, and  easily  passes  into  a  spirit  of  confiscation. 
As  a  matter  of  fact,  the  very  wealthy  are  greatly  shel- 
tered, and  most  are  willing  that  they  should  be  some- 
what sheltered,  under  an  application  of  the  principle 
that  taxes  should  be  proportioned  to  one's  ability  to 
bear  them. 

§  3.  There  are  some  subordinate  principles,  bearing 
chiefly  on  method,  not  fully  embraced  in  the  foregoing 
considerations.  Taxes  should  be  as  simple  as  possible. 
The  results  which  follow  taxes  are  often  so  remote  and 
so  complex  as  to  demand  great  caution  in  venturing 
out  in  new  directions.  We  should  adhere  as  closely 
as  may  be  to  the  well-worn  paths,  —  paths  in  which  the 
state  can  forecast  its  gains,  and  the  citizen  measure  his 
liabilities. 

With  the  principle  of  simplicity  is  associated  that  of 
permanence.     The  most  marked  cases  of  injustice  arise 


TAXATION.  131 

in  a  sudden  shifting  of  taxes.  In  the  United  States 
immense  sums  have  been  made  in  anticipation  of  in- 
creased imposts.  Whatever  tendency  there  is  in  taxes 
to  distribute  themselves,  it  can  be  fully  secured  only  in 
long  periods.  The  removing  of  an  old  tax  and  the  im- 
posing of  a  new  one  may  very  much  alter,  for  the  time 
being,  the  profits  of  production.  Taxes  become  increas- 
ingly just,  many  of  them,  by  the  mere  progress  of  time. 

Taxes  should  favor  enterprise ;  or,  at  least,  embarrass 
it  as  little  as  possible.  This  is  involved  in  the  secon- 
dary rules  of  Adam  Smith,  and  in  the  principle,  Leave- 
them-as-you-find-them.  It  is,  however,  wider  than  these 
directions  imply,  and  should  lead  us  to  shelter  capital  in 
its  active  productive  forms  as  far  as  possible.  Taxes 
should  not  limit  the  liberty,  or  reduce  the  power,  of 
production.  We  must  nourish  the  goose  that  lays  the 
golden  eggs. 

Taxes  ought  to  favor  equality  in  distribution.  Social 
prosperity  and  productive  power  must,  in  the  long  run, 
depend  on  diffused  wealth.  Concentrated  wealth  tends 
to  luxury  on  the  one  hand,  and  the  weakness  of  ex- 
treme poverty  on  the  other.  Taxation  ought  to  concur 
with  the  general  effort  of  the  state  to  secure  equality 
of  -advantages,  the  perpetual  renewal  of  life  in  all  ranks 
of  men.  When  the  state  even  inadvertently  favors  bad 
distribution,  the  social  balance  is  quickly  lost.  Prosper- 
ity at  one  point  is  made  to  cover  up  growing  weakness 
elsewhere.  Licenses  and  high  licenses  tend  to  concen- 
trate business  in  the  hands  of  a  few.  Excises  have 
something  of  the  same  tendency,  and  have  it  very 
decidedly  when  a  reduced  rate,  as  was  the  case  in 
matches,    is   conceded    for   stamps    purchased    in    large 


432  civics. 

quantities.  With  these  principles  and  rules  before  us, 
we  wish  to  consider  briefly  the  leading  forms  of  taxa- 
tion current  with  us. 

§  4.  Taxes  are  divided  into  direct  and  indirect.  The 
direct  tax  rests  with  him  who  pays  it ;  the  indirect  tax 
is  transferred,  in  whole  or  in  part,  to  other  persons. 
This  transfer  of  taxes  is  a  very  certain  fact,  though 
oftentimes  not  one  as  accurate,  rapid,  and  easily  trace- 
able as  the  theory  implies.  A  tax  may  vary,  as  regards 
transferribility,  with  the  progress  of  events.  The  abil- 
ity of  one  paying  a  tax  on  commodities  to  shift  the  tax 
on  purchasers  will  depend  on  the  relation  of  supply  and 
demand.  If  the  supply  can  be  readily  reduced  the  bur- 
den can,  in  part,  be  transferred.1  It  is  improbable  that 
it  can  be  wholly  shifted.  The  demand  is  likely  to 
decrease  with  the  rise  of  price,  and  in  the  new  equi- 
librium both  parties  will  have  conceded  something. 
Taxes,  in  a  given  form  of  production,  rarely  remain 
uniform  long  enough  to  be  perfectly  diffused  by  equal- 
izing the  profits  between  different  branches  of  business. 
There  are  much  friction  and  many  retarding  forces  in 
the  application  of  the  theory.  An  unexpected  tax  falling 
on  production  is  like  a  globule  of  mercury  let  drop  on 
the  floor ;  it  breaks  up  instantly  into  minute  spheres 
and  disappears  in  all  directions,  resting  we  hardly  know 
where. 

The  chief  forms  of  direct  taxes  are  taxes  on  real 
estate,  on  personal  property,  on  income,  on  inheritance, 
and  a  poll-tax.  That  which  has  al\va}*s  commended 
real  estate  to  rulers  as  an  object  of  taxation  has  been 
its  inability  to  escape.     It  lies  in  sunlight,  and  cannot 

l  "  The  Shifting  and  Incidence  of  Taxation,"  E.  R.  A.  Seligman. 


TAXATION.  433 

elude  the  coming  blow.  It  lias,  moreover,  little  power 
to  transfer  the  shock  it  receives.  The  supply  cannot 
be  altered  as  far  as  land  is  concerned,  and  only  slowly 
as  regards  buildings.  The  readjustment  which  takes 
place  is  the  very  dilatory  and  partial  one  by  which 
different  forms  of  business  are  equilibrated  in  profits. 
A  tax  that  has  rested  for  a  long  period  on  real  estate, 
becomes  so  fixed  a  term  in  valuation,  in  expectation,  as 
no  longer  to  disturb  property  relations.  This  is  simply 
saying  that  wounds  heal,  not  that  new  wounds  will  not 
be  mischievous.  The  fact  gives  no  countenance  to  in- 
discriminate and  repeated  blows  directed  at  real  estate. 
They  each  inflict  its  own  injury.  The  certainty  of 
securing  taxes  laid  on  real  estate  often  operates  to 
obscure  justice. 

The  chief  difficulty  in  the  taxes,  properly  laid,  on  real 
estate  arises  from  valuation.  In  a  narrow  community 
the  evil  is  not  likely  to  be  a  grave  one,  as  much  the 
same  standards  prevail.  Absolute  correctness  is  not 
needed  ;  relative  correctness  suffices.  When,  however, 
valuations  are  made  by  different  boards  in  remote  terri- 
tories, and  under  very  different  conditions,  each  board 
anxious  not  to  subject  its  clientage  to  more  than  its 
share  of  burdens,  the  difficulty  becomes  much  greater. 
Absolute  correctness  becomes  a  necessary  means  to 
relative  correctness.  From  this  fact  real  estate  is  best 
fitted  to  bear  local  burdens,  and  will  remain  a  chief 
source  of  revenue  for  this  purpose.  Moreover,  real 
estate  profits  most  directly  by  good  local  government 
and  local  improvements. 

Dangers,  in  addition  to  the  danger  to  which  real 
estate  is  exposed  of  bearing  more  than  its  own  proportion, 


434  civics. 

are  its  liability,  in  given  instances,  to  become  unproduc- 
tive and  thus  unable  to  sustain  tlie  tax,  and  the  liability 
of  depressing  agriculture,  a  primary  source  of  wealth, 
but  one  easily  distressed. 

Personal  property,  the  second  great  subject  of  direct 
taxation,  was  originally  so  closely  connected  with  real 
estate  as  hardly  to  call  for  separate  treatment.  Wealth 
expressed  itself  in  landed  possessions,  and  additional 
wealth  came  in  chiefly  as  accessories  —  flocks,  herds, 
barns,  implements.  With  the  growth  of  manufacture 
and  commerce  this  relation  was  rapidly  altered,  till  per- 
sonal property  is  largely  detached  from  land,  exceeds 
in  value  real  estate,  and  assumes  forms  not  easily  dis- 
coverable. Many  comparatively  fruitless  efforts  have 
been  made  to  follow  personal  property,  and  make  it 
draw,  as  an  even  yoke-fellow,  with  real  estate  at  the 
public  load.  So  far  governments  have  not  been  able  to 
meet  the  disposition  to  elude  taxes  by  the  holders  of 
personal  property.1  Some  states,  as  Ohio  and  California, 
have  enacted  very  stringent  laws  with  the  purpose  of 
making  the  tax  more  universal  and  equal.  The  success 
has  not  been  proportioned  to  the  effort.  Personal  prop- 
erty in  New  York  bears  only  about  one-eighth  of  the 
burden  of  real  estate.  In  Massachusetts  the  proportion 
is  more  favorable.  The  gold  and  silver  returned  in 
Cook  County,  embracing  Chicago,  in  a  single  year,  was 
$14,815  ;  diamonds  and  jewellery,  $16,765 ;  money  with 
banks  and  brokers,  $ 654, 350. 2 

The  moral,  social  bearings,  therefore,  of  the  tax  have 

1  "General  Property  Tax,"  E.  R.  A.  Seligman,  Political  Science 
Quarterly,  vol.  v.  no.  1. 

2  The  Statesman,  February,  1889. 


TAXATION.  435 

been  peculiarly  unfortunate.  It  has  been  the  rallying 
point  of  falsehood,  perjury,  and  bitter  dissatisfaction, 
No  one  questions  the  justness  of  a  tax  on  personal  prop^ 
erty.  'Indeed,  it  or  its  equivalent  is  an  indispensable 
condition  of  justice.  Personal  property,  productive 
capital,  is  able  to  bear,  and,  ought  to  bear,  its  own  bur- 
den ;  as  articles  of  luxury  and  as  a  source  of  expenditure 
it  is  a  particularly  fit  subject  of  taxation.  Many,  how- 
ever, feel  that  this  tax  should  be  abandoned,  because  of 
the  very  partial  success  which  has  hitherto  attended  on 
its  imposition,  and  because  of  its  manifest  injury  to 
public  morals.  These  may  be  sufficient  reasons  for 
shifting  the  form  of  the  tax,  but  hardly  sufficient  for 
surrendering  the  very  idea  of  justice.  This  is  to  yield 
to  wrong  simply  because  of  its  strength.  It  is  to  adopt 
in  taxation  the  pickpocket's  principle,  Take  money  where 
you  can  get  it  with  most  ease  and  least  noise.  It  may 
certainly  be  doubted  whether  the  morality  of  a  nation, 
as  one  whole,  is  improved  by  accepting  this  temper  of 
evasion  and  falsehood.  Mr.  Chamberlain,  M.P.,  said  in 
a  speech,  "  You  may  try  if  you  like  to  put  all  the  taxa- 
tion on  the  rich ;  you  may  try  till  you  are  black  in  the 
face.  Whatever  you  do,  the  pressure  of  taxation  will 
ultimately,  and  in  the  long  run,  fall  upon  the  poor."1 
Are  we  to  accept  this  defiant  dictum,  this  bondage  of 
the  poor  under  the  rich  ? 

Whatever  is  secured  by  a  personal  property  tax,  even 
though  the  amount  be  but  a  fraction  of  what  it  ought  to 
be,  aids  justice,  does  not  reduce  it.  The  eighth  part 
paid  in  New  York  relieves  by  so  much  the  burdens  that 
fall  elsewhere.      The   injustice    is   associated   with  the 

1  The  Spectator,  Feb.  <J,  1895. 


436  civics. 

seven-eighths  not  paid.  The  injustice  between  the 
holders  of  personal  property  is  enhanced  by  the  in- 
equality of  payment,  but  in  reference  to  the  community 
as  one  whole,  the  tax  promotes  justice.  We  do  not  say, 
As  we  have  caught  but  one  of  three  criminals,  therefore 
let  us  dismiss  him. 

If  we  can  do  our  work  more  successfully  some  other 
way,  by  an  income  tax,  by  a  vigilant  oversight  of  cor- 
porations, by  stamps  giving  legal  validity  to  credits.,  very 
well,  but  to  incontinently,  in  the  presence  of  determined 
dishonesty,  surrender,  is  to  abandon  the  state  as  a 
righteous  organization. 

The  third  form  of  direct  taxation  is  an  income  tax. 
The  equity  of  an  income  tax  is  so  manifest  and  com- 
plete that  we  are  compelled  to  ascribe  much  of  the  hos- 
tility it  encounters  to  that  bad  temper  which  dislikes 
taxation  just  in  the  degree  in  which  it  is  just.  No  tax 
is  more  accurately  proportioned  to  ability  than  this  tax. 
Income,  more  than  property,  discloses  the  terms  of 
power  on  which  one  stands  with  the  world.  An  in- 
come arising  from  labor  is  less  indicative  of  strength 
than  one  which  springs  from  capital,  but  the  differ- 
ence is  partially  compensated  by  the  fact  that  personal 
power  is  a  more  reliable  resource  than  wealth. 

An  income  tax,  so  far  as  its  equity  is  concerned, 
might  well  be  made  to  yield  a  large  share  of  public 
expenditure.  In  that  case,  it  should  reach  all  classes 
who  are  completely  self-supporting.  It  is  no  object  for 
a  state  to  impel  any  downward  toward  pauperism  by 
a  tax.  The  income  tax  of  two  per  cent  just  imposed 
with  us  on  all  incomes  exceeding  four  thousand  dollars 
is  attacked  as  "  predatory  ;  "  yet  its  true    intent   is   to 


TAXATION.  437 

stay  and  correct  the  predatory  inroads  of  taxation  so 
familiar  with  us  on  the  relatively  poor. 

This  tax  has  unfortunately  been  pronounced  uncon- 
stitutional by  five  out  of  nine  judges  of  the  Supreme 
Court.  With  us  the  weighty  reasons  of  dissent  given 
by  Judge  Harlan  render  quite  nugatory  any  moral 
force  which  would  naturally  attach  to  such  a  decision. 
It  is  objected  to  as  unequal,  resting  on  a  single  class ; 
yet  its  purpose  and  effect  are  to  make  taxation  more 
equal,  laying  their  portion  of  it  on  a  class  that  have 
notoriously  eluded  their  proper  burdens.  Every  tax 
defines  the  class  on  which  it  is  to  fall ;  often  singles  out 
a  narrow  class  amid  allied  classes,  as  in  taxes  on  a 
given  kind  of  production,  and  not  infrequently,  as  in 
duties,  varies  the  imposition  with  the  value  of  the  com- 
modity. 

An  income  tax  can  with  much  justice  be  made  a  pro- 
gressive one.  A  large  income  has  more  power  to  bear 
taxation  than  is  expressed  by  its  ratio  of  increase. 
There  is,  however,  no  certain  limit  of  this  additional 
power ;  the  temptation,  the  principle  once  admitted,  to 
make  the  progressive  burden  excessive  is  a  dangerous 
one ;  the  general  sense  of  justice  gives  the  method  a 
divided  support;  enterprise  may  be  somewhat  harassed 
by  it.  It  would  seem,  therefore,  to  be  a  more  safe  and 
restrained  method  to  make  no  effort  to  pursue  these 
later  increments  of  power.  When  an  income  tax  is  a 
secondary  feature  with  other  taxes,  an  exemption  of 
small  incomes  is  plainly  demanded  as  an  equalization 
of  burdens. 

The  reasons  for  an  income  tax,  in  addition  to  its 
peculiar  justice,  are,  that  it  is  perfectly  understood,  im- 


438  civics. 

mediately  felt,  and  tends  to  frugality ;  that  it  goes  far 
to  supersede  a  tax  on  personal  property ;  that  it  intro- 
duces into  taxation  no  unknown  and  vexatious  terms, 
resting  in  a  quiet  way  where  it  is  laid  ;  that  it  favors 
equal  distribution,  and,  by  its  obvious  justice,  promotes 
good-will.  It  is  also,  after  a  little,  when  once  fairly 
under  way,  cheap  in  collection,  calculable  in  returns, 
and  capable  of  ready  increase  and  decrease. 

The  reasons  urged  against  it  are  that  it  is  inquisito- 
rial, and  is  capable  of  ready  evasion.  The  force  of  the 
first  reason  lies  very  much  in  an  obnoxious  word,  in- 
quisitorial, carefully  chosen  to  do  its  work.  An  income 
tax  is  less  inquisitorial  than  one  on  personal  property. 
A  knowledge  of  one's  possessions  extends  deeper  than 
a  knowledge  of  one's  income.  The  inquiry  is  no  more 
searching  than  it  must  be  if  taxation  is  to  be  just.  The 
inquisitorial  temper  is  chiefly  the  product  of  a  dispo- 
sition to  evade  obligations.  Moreover,  a  knowledge  of 
financial  ability  is  one  which  favors  sound  business 
methods.  Men  are  willing  to  institute  and  reward  agen- 
cies whose  purpose  is  this  very  information. 

The  objection  that  it  is  a  tax  which  provokes  evasion 
is  a  real  one,  but  we  yield  to  it  at  the  peril  of  perma- 
nent injustice.  The  escape  is  not  as  open  as  in  personal 
property.  A  large  income  declares  itself  in  many  ways, 
a  given  piece  of  property  may  show  no  sign.  Each 
year  tends,  under  well-sustained  effort,  to  uncover  more 
completely  the  facts.  When  a  certain  point  is  passed, 
and  the  majority  are  accepting  their  duty,  the  tendency 
is  toward  growing  completeness.  He  who  resists  is 
more  and  more  isolated,  more  and  more  obnoxious  to 
those  who  acquiesce. 


TAXATION.  439 

England,  for  half  a  century,  has  had  this  form  of  tax. 
It  was  introduced  as  a  temporary  measure,  but  has  been 
found  so  convenient  and  satisfactory  that  no  administra- 
tion, notwithstanding  the  opposition  to  it,  has  been  found 
willing  to  abolish  it.  Gladstone,  in  his  protracted  re- 
adjustment of  taxes  that  they  might  be  borne  with  less 
inconvenience,  found  the  flexible  income  tax  a  constant 
aid,  and  retained  it  against  his  own  expressed  opinion. 

It  is  urged  that  an  income  tax  may  drive  capital  out 
of  a  given  state.  This  objection  is  of  moment,  when, 
as  with  us,  there  are  many  distinct  areas  of  taxation. 
It  is  not  of  much  moment  when  taxation  is  commensu- 
rate with  the  nation.  If  an  unpatriotic  citizen  strives 
to  draw  his  revenue  from  one  country  and  spend  it  in 
another,  escaping  the  obligations  of  both,  methods  can 
be  devised  of  anticipating  that  revenue.  The  argument 
proves  that  an  income  tax  should  be  national. 

A  direct  tax  looked  on  with  increasing  favor  is  that 
on  inheritance.1  The  Gould  estate  is  said  to  have 
yielded  $700,000,  and  the  Stewart  estate  $300,000.  It 
is  a  tax  that  can  readily  be  made  progressive,  yet  the 
same  reasons  lie  against  an  increasing  tax  here  as  in 
the  income  tax. 

The  justice  of  the  tax  is  not  as  marked  as  in  the  case 
of  incomes.  Direct  descent  should  be  shielded  as  com- 
pared with  collateral  descent.  A  closely  compacted 
household  of  moderate  means,  the  fruit  of  the  labor  of 
all,  and  the  dependence  of  all,  is  aggrieved  by  a  heavy 
tax  following  on  an  occasion  which  has  nothing  to  do 
with  their  public  duties.    If  the  property  subject  to  this 

i  "  The  Theory  of  the  Inheritance  Tax,"  Max  West,  Political 
Science  Quarterly,  vol.  viii.  p.  426, 


440  civics. 

tax  chances  to  be  transferred  two  or  three  times  in  a  brief 
period,  the  heavy  blows  of  life  are  given  by  the  state 
an  additional  unbearable  quality.  As  it  is  a  tax  which 
falls  irregularly,  exceptionally,  and  at  some  one  time  on 
a  few  only,  it  is  liable  to  be  imposed  in  a  forgetful  and 
harsh  temper,  while  those  exposed  to  it  have  but  little 
opportunity  for  remonstrance.  This  tendency  is  aggra- 
vated by  the  satisfaction  of  the  popular  mind  when  the 
burden  falls  on  large  means.  These  considerations 
should  call  out  a  spirit  of  restraint  and  reserve.  If 
the  tax  becomes  excessive,  it  tends  to  modify  the  ordi- 
nary form  of  transfer  by  inheritance. 

The  reasons  which  justify  the  tax  are :  the  state  gives 
the  power  of  inheritance,  and  performs  a  service  in  con- 
nection with  it :  the  tax,  at  least  as  a  general  thing,  is 
accompanied  with  the  power  to  bear  it ;  it  is  easy  of 
application  and  collection,  as  the  property  subject  to  it 
is  in  the  immediate  purvey  of  the  state  ;  it  favors  equal 
distribution.  It  has,  however,  something  of  the  bad 
flavor,  Take  what  you  can  get. 

The  simplest  direct  tax  is  a  poll-tax.  It  is  a  very 
unequal  tax  and  has  little  to  commend  it,  even  when 
associated,  as  a  safeguard,  with  suffrage.  In  this  con- 
nection it  may  have  a  favorable  as  well  as  an  unfavor- 
able effect.  It  may  attach  importance  to  suffrage,  deter 
the  citizen  from  its  indolent  exercise,  and  aid  registra- 
tion; or  it  may  increase  the  indifference  to  public 
duties,  and  make  more  possible  a  corrupt  command  of 
votes.  It  is  a  good  illustration  of  the  misleading  force 
of  forms.  It  meets  in  the  most  absolute  way  the  claims 
of  a  stickler  for  equality,  and  yet  it  is  in  fact  the  most 
unequal  of  taxes. 


TAXATION.  441 

§  5.  The  leading  forms  of  indirect  taxes  are  customs, 
excises,  licenses,  taxes  on  transactions.  Customs,  taxes 
laid  upon  imported  goods,  are  far  more  acceptable  to 
the  public  than  excises,  taxes  laid  on  home  productions. 
This  arises  from  the  fact  that  they  are  so  often  de- 
signed to  give  protection  to  producers  within  the  nation, 
and  that,  in  any  case,  a  portion  of  the  burden  falls 
on  foreigners.  If  trade  is  checked  by  customs,  the  im- 
porter, in  his  effort  to  restore  it,  concedes  something  on 
prices.  Customs  imposed  for  protection  are  productive 
of  serious  evils.  Obscure  consequences  not  intended,  and 
impossible  of  correction,  arise  from  them.  The  various 
branches  of  production  are  so  dependent  on  each  other, 
that  prices  cannot  be  altered  at  one  point  without  alter- 
ing elsewhere  the  cost  of  production.  The  equilibrium 
of  natural  forces  is  lost,  and  our  efforts  to  restore  it 
serve  only  to  increase  the  confusion.  We  reach  more 
and  more  an  accidental,  unknowable,  and  dangerous  con- 
flict of  opposed  interests. 

This  form  of  tax  begets  a  moral  temper  very  unfavor- 
able to  justice  and  to  well-directed  enterprise.  Not 
simply  are  the  burdens  of  taxation  shifted  unjustly 
from  interest  to  interest ;  law  comes  to  be  looked  on 
as  a  leading  means  of  promoting  one's  private  welfare. 
The  theory  on  which  protection  as  an  economic  policy 
is  made  to  act  is  soon  forgotten,  and  is  displaced  by 
a  constant  and  corrupt  struggle  of  conflicting  claims. 
Taxation,  always  difficult,  even  when  treated  by  itself 
as  a  purely  public  measure,  becomes  still  more  obscure 
and  difficult  when  made  to  involve  innumerable  private 
interests.  The  laying  of  these  taxes  and  the  removal 
of  them  are  alike  the  occasion  of  gratuitous  gains  and 


442  civics. 

losses.  No  system  could  well  be  more  productive  of 
debauch  in  the  public  mind  than  that  of  protection  in 
its  later  stages,  when  it  has  resolved  itself  into  a  series 
of  transactions  few  of  which  can  bear  the  light ;  when 
the  nation  is  ostensibly  laying  taxes,  but  actually  divid- 
ing spoils. 

Customs  fall  heavily  on  the  poor.  The  revenue  is 
small  unless  they  are  laid  on  articles  of  general  con- 
sumption. So  laid,  the  tax  is  divided  not  according 
to  the  powers  of  citizens,  but  according  to  their  wants. 
In  keeping  with  this  unfair  temper  which  inheres  in 
the  method  itself,  the  impost  on  cheaper  goods  con- 
sumed by  the  poor,  as  in  the  case  of  woollens,  is  often 
relatively  greater  than  that  laid  on  more  costly  goods. 
The  tax  often  assumes  a  double  form,  that  of  a  specific 
charge  and  of  an  ad  valorem  rate.  It  is  thus  fre- 
quently heavier  than  it  seems  to  be.  When  prices 
decline,  the  specific  charge  remains  unreduced.  The 
producer  thus  protects  himself  against  a  fall  in  prices, 
against  any  tendency  of  increased  production  to  cheapen 
commodities.  The  poor  never  fall  more  helplessly  into 
the  hands  of  the  strong  than  when  taxes  begin  to  yield 
to  the  claims  of  individuals. 

A  burden  other  than  that  of  the  tax  itself  is  imposed, 
in  the  case  of  protection,  which  may  easily  exceed  that 
of  the  tax,  and  of  which  we  have  no  measure.  A  large 
share  of  this  transfer  is  made  from  the  resources  of 
those  relatively  poor  to  the  resources  of  those  relatively 
rich.  An  amount  of  injustice  can  be  hidden  at  this 
point  beyond  all  estimate.  When  the  duties  on  iron 
and  steel  were  $20,713,000  the  additional  cost  to  the 
consumer  was  placed  at  $60,000,000. * 

1  "  Recent  Economic  Changes,"  p.  321, 


TAXATION.  443 

Ease  and  certainty  of  imposition,  the  strong  reasons 
which  promote  customs,  also  favor  excises.  The  imme- 
diate disturbance  which  they  bring  to  business  has  ordi- 
narily sufficed  to  hold  them  in  check.  In  any  sudden 
emergency  —  as  in  the  Civil  War  —  government  is  likely 
to  avail  itself  of  this  resource.  The  objections  to  them, 
though  not  as  grave  as  to  customs,  are  great.  The  ad- 
ditional price  of  products  reduces  demand  and  injures 
production  in  a  degree  it  is  not  easy  to  trace  or  to  meas- 
ure. The  cost  of  collection  is  somewhat  greater  than 
in  direct  taxation.  In  Paris,  in  1861,  the  expense  of 
collection  was  in  the  one  case  twelve  per  cent,  in  the 
other,  four  per  cent.  In  England,  the  difference  is 
slight. 

These  taxes  tend  somewhat  to  monopoly.  Large  con- 
cerns gain  more  prompt  attention,  and  find  the  way 
more  open  to  them.  Excises,  in  their  final  payment, 
are  likely  to  have  little  or  no  reference  to  ability.  If 
they  rest  on  articles  of  general  consumption,  they  inter- 
penetrate the  entire  community,  and  find  their  way  to 
the  poorest.  No  man  knows  what  he  pays,  nor,  un- 
less he  is  more  thoughtful  than  many,  knows  that  he 
pays  anything.  It  is  of  this  form  of  taxation  that 
it  is  said,  "  It  sups  in  our  cup  and  dips  in  our  dish." 
Neither  buyer  nor  vender  escapes  it.  It  is  everywhere 
present  in  the  air,  and  sometimes  as  a  subtile  poison. 

The  next  most  important  form  of  indirect  taxation 
is  that  of  licenses.  The  distinction  by  which  taxes  are 
divided  into  direct  and  indirect  is  not  a  perfectly  firm 
and  invariable  one.  The  same  form  of  tax  will  he  dis- 
tributed in  different  degrees  and  with  different  rapidity, 
according  to  the  conditions  which  accompany  its  impo- 


444  civics. 

sition.  Some  have  regarded  licenses  as  direct  taxes. 
If  the  business  licensed  is  sluggish  or  unsuccessful,  the 
tax  will  be  but  partially  transferred ;  if  the  business  is 
active  and  profitable,  it  will  rapidly  pass  on  as  a  part 
of  the  expenditure  incurred.  As  the  incidence  of  tax- 
ation is  a  most  important  practical  point,  it  is  well 
to  draw  attention  to  this  division,  notwithstanding  its 
variable  character. 

Licenses  in  the  Northern  States  are  chiefly  associated 
with  some  form  of  police  supervision,  are  extended  to 
branches  of  business  that  call  for  restraint.  Licenses, 
simply  as  a  tax,  are  objectionable  as  a  preliminary  em- 
barrassment to  business,  and  as  regressive.  They  fall 
most  heavily  on  those  who  are  just  entering  on  a  new 
pursuit.  They  thus  tend  to  a  monopoly.  This  is  clearly 
seen  in  the  high  licenses  recently  associated  with  the 
sale  of  intoxicating  drinks.  They  have  thrown  saloons 
into  the  hands  of  brewers,  have  concentrated  the  busi- 
ness, and  made  it  more  systematic  and  formidable  than 
ever. 

Taxes  on  transactions,  imposed  in  connection  with 
stamps,  have  usually  only  an  obscure  and  changeable 
relation  to  the  ability  of  those  who  pay  them,  and  are 
distributed  very  slowly,  as  one  item  of  outlay  to  be 
charged  over  to  the  business  with  which  they  are 
associated. 

§  6.  A  most  serious  embarrassment  to  taxation  has 
been  and  is  that  it  offers  a  ready  means  of  doing  many 
tilings  that  are  only  indirectly  connected  with  it  and  are 
of  doubtful  expediency.  Taxation  is  thus  embarrassed 
by  considerations  quite  foreign  to  it,  and  both  branches 
of  a  critical  work  are  still  further  confused.     These  sec- 


TAXATION.  445 

ondary  objects  are  the  encouragement  or  the  restriction 
or  the  regulation  of  some  pursuit  or  of  some  method 
of  conduct. 

Education  and  religion  are  favored  by  an  exemption 
from  taxation  of  property  devoted  to  them.  The  second 
of  these  exemptions  gives  occasion  of  complaint,  as 
frequently  not  called  for,  the  ability  of  those  supporting 
the  worship  thus  aided  being  ample  to  sustain  its  ex- 
penditure ;  as  often  unequal  between  different  forms 
of  faith  ;  and  as  always  imposing  a  burden  on  a  few 
citizens  whose  convictions  are  repugnant  to  current 
religious  belief. 

Taxation  and  protection  are  wholly  distinct  in  the 
principles  which  they  involve.  They  cannot  both  be 
included  in  the  same  measure  without  the  sacrifice  of 
one  or  the  other.  The  more  the  protection  afforded 
by  given  imports,  the  less  the  return  in  taxes,  and  the 
greater  the  disturbance  to  equality,  the  ruling  idea  in 
taxation.  If  protection  were  made  to  rest  on  its  own 
reasons,  and  not  enclosed  and  concealed  by  the  constant 
and  necessary  claims  of  taxation,  it  would  be  much  less 
frequently  conceded.     This  is  plainly  seen  in  bounties. 

Taxation  is  associated  with  police  regulation  in  the 
same  confusing  way.  Heavy  excises  on  tobacco  and 
intoxicating  drinks,  and  high  license,  gain  acceptance  in 
the  community  not  as  equitable  taxes,  but  as  needed 
restraints  on  undesirable  forms  of  consumption.  This 
very  convenient,  general,  and,  as  many  think  it,  laudable 
policy  would  seem  to  be  a  bitter  mistake.  These  taxes 
are  spoken  of,  and  thought  of,  as  if  they  were  intended 
to  reduce,  and  did  reduce,  the  consumption  of  these 
commodities.     This  consideration  has  been  made  a  pri- 


446  CIVICS. 

mary  reason  for  high  license.  The  appetite  which  is 
gratified  by  intoxicants  is  so  imperious,  and  the  charges 
for  a  single  indulgence  are  so  light,  that  the  use  of  those 
beverages  is  affected  scarcely  at  all  by  prices.  They  do 
not  come  under  the  ordinary  law  of  supply  and  demand. 
The  consumption  of  fermented  and  distilled  liquors, 
particularly  the  former,  has  rapidly  increased  in  a 
period  covered  by  heavy  taxation.  Taxes  have  con- 
curred with  other  causes  to  increase  relatively  the  use 
of  beer,  but  a  tax  reaching  eight  hundred  per  cent  on 
distilled  liquors  has  not  reduced  their  consumption  as 
drinks.1  The  classes  which  would  be  affected  by  price 
would  be  those  relatively  temperate,  those  from  whom 
the  state  has  little  if  anything  to  fear.  The  tax  has 
next  to  no  power  to  reduce  a  habit  that  is  such  as  to 
threaten  the  public  welfare.  It  is  time  that  we  recog- 
nized the  fact  that  taxes  are  not  deterrents  to  intoxica- 
tion, that  as  police  regulations  they  are  utterly  deceptive. 

Many  ascribe  to  this  taxation  a  moral  force.  The 
reprobation  of  the  community  is  expressed  by  it.  This 
censure  is  of  the  most  intangible  nature,  and,  such  as  it 
is,  is  outweighed  by  the  fact  that  the  community,  in 
granting  licenses,  accepts  the  traffic,  and,  in  imposing 
high  licenses,  lays  upon  the  seller  the  necessity  of  cor- 
responding exertion  to  push  it  forward. 

Another  reason  which  has  sustained  these  taxes  has 
been  the  notion  that  tobacco  and  liquors  are  luxuries, 
and  therefore  fit  subjects  of  taxation.  The  same  feel- 
ing is  expressed  in  characterizing  prohibitory  laws  as 
sumptuary  legislation.  There  is  nothing  in  the  facts  to 
justify  either  idea.     Intoxicants  are  not  luxuries,  nor  is 

1  "Cyclopedia  of  Temperance,"  p.  131. 


TAXATION.  447 

prohibition  of  the  nature  of  sumptuary  law.  Luxuries 
are  some  unusual  and  considerable  expenditure  in  the 
line  of  personal  indulgence.  A  luxury  cannot  extend 
through  all  classes,  the  very  lowest.  Intoxicants  are 
neither  necessities  nor  luxuries.  They  are  a  third  thing, 
owing  their  hold  on  the  human  family  to  the  degenerate 
physical  state  they  induce.  Luxuries  are  selected  for 
public  burdens  on  the  ground  that  they  imply  the 
power  of  payment,  a  power  that  may  be  advantageously 
directed  to  the  public  service. 

There  is  no  such  implication  in  the  use  of  tobacco 
and  intoxicants.  The  consumption  of  these  products 
is  perverted  expenditure,  and  is  more  frequently  both 
the  cause  of,  and  an  indication  of,  poverty.  If  these 
heavy  taxes  have  any  justification,  it  cannot  arise  under 
the  idea  of  luxury,  but  must  arise  under  that  of  repres- 
sion. In  this  they  also  signally  fail.  Mere  pretences 
are  kept  in  the  foreground  to  give  a  color  to  burdens 
most  unreasonable  and  pernicious.  The  word  sump- 
tuary is  used  in  a  blind  and  misleading  way.  Sump- 
tuary laws  are  intended  to  restrain  lavish  expenditure. 
Prohibitory  laws  forbid  the  sale  of  intoxicants  as  pro- 
ductive of  poverty  and  crime,  and  as  breaking  down  the 
safeguards  of  our  social  life. 

The  mischievous  character  of  these  taxes  is  very 
manifest.  They  fall  in  large  amounts  on  the  most 
miserable  and  defenceless  class  in  the  community  —  the 
women  and  children  dependent  on  those  addicted  to  in- 
toxication. Not  only  does  the  state  fail  to  defend  these 
defenceless  ones,  who  appeal  to  it  for  aid  in  an  extrem- 
ity that  admits  of  no  ordinary  redress;  it  proceeds  to 
turn  this,  their  extreme  wretchedness,  into  revenue,  and 


448  CIVICS. 

offers  as  an  excuse  reasons  that  have  no  substance  in 
sound  theory.  If  hypocrisy  means  the  doing  of  evil 
under  a  deceitful  disguise  of  doing  good,  then  this  tax- 
ation is  flagrant  hypocrisy. 

This  dark  color  is  deepened  by  the  fact  that  these 
taxes  are  made  especially  to  follow  the  consumption  of 
the  poor.  Is  it  because  that  consumption  is  luxurious  ? 
The  tax  on  all  grades  of  cigars  and  tobacco  is  the  same. 
The  poorer  the  cigar,  the  higher  the  rate.  Beer,  a  na- 
tive product,  is  taxed  ;  while  native  wines,  the  drinks  of 
the  more  luxurious,  are  untaxed.  A  government  that 
can  lay  and  collect  a  tax  on  spirits  five  times  greater 
than  its  value,  that  can  discriminate  between  woollen 
goods,  in  order  to  impose  a  heavier  tax  on  inferior  grades, 
can  hardly  be  allowed  to  say  that  it  cannot  successfully 
distinguish  a  higher  grade  of  cigars  or  a  better  quality 
of  tobacco  from  a  lower  one.  In  no  direction  is  the  cal- 
lous hand  of  law  so  wanting  in  all  delicacy  and  sympa- 
thy of  touch  as  where  the  interests  of  the  weak  and  the 
poor  are  involved. 

A  like  disregard  of  the  safety  of  those  most  needing 
shelter  was  shown  in  .the  case  of  lotteries ;  but  this 
offence  is  being  removed.  A  similar  compounding  of 
incompatible  things,  penalty  and  indulgence,  the  exac- 
tions of  the  strong  and  the  unheeded  claims  of  the  weak, 
reappear  in  houses  of  ill-fame.  No  firm  ground  can  be 
gained  till  the  state  accepts  its  true  function,  the  se- 
curing of  a  large  safety,  and  refuses  all  complicity  with 
inimical  conditions.  There  is  no  more  mischievous  net 
entangling  the  feet  of  men,  than  that  which  unites  the 
state  with  the  vicious  and  criminal  indulgences  of  so- 
ciety, and  makes  them  a  source  of  revenue. 


TAXATION.  449 

The  taxation  of  corporations  under  an  obscure  idea  of 
thereby  correcting  or  reducing  the  profits  associated 
with  them,  is  another  example  of  a  blind  and  half-vin- 
dictive policy.  It  has  assumed  great  diversity  of  forms, 
none  of  them  quite  adequate  or  commendable.1  The 
evils  incident  to  corporate  action  must  be  confronted 
more  adequately  and  systematically  than  by  taxation, 
and  may  be  easily  aggravated  by  unreasonable  taxes. 
This  wider  survey  of  the  entire  field  will  modify  taxa- 
tion by  putting  us  in  better  possession  of  the  sources 
of  wealth  ;  but  its  primary  purpose  will  be  to  make 
combination  a  wholesome  instrument  in  production  and 
consumption. 

Just  taxation  is  so  associated  with  the  relation  of 
classes  to  each  other,  and  with  the  moral  sense  of  the 
citizen,  as  to  be  capable  of  improvement  but  slowly, 
point  by  point,  as  the  conditions  of  progress  are  secured. 
Taxation  constantly  raises,  in  an  urgent,  concrete,  prac- 
tical form,  a  great  variety  of  social  and  moral  questions, 
which  we  can  carry  through  to  a  final  answer  only  by 
the  aid  of  the  most  comprehensive  principles. 

§  7.  The  taxation  of  England  is  to  be  especially 
commended  for  its  simplicity  and  for  the  precision  with 
which  it  is  adapted  to  its  end.  Our  own  methods  are 
exceedingly  defective  in  both  respects.  Revenue  and 
expenditure  in  England  are  so  closely  calculated  that 
they  are  not  expected  to  separate  from  each  other  by  a 
difference  greater  than  one  per  cent.  In  1890  the  esti- 
mates and  the  outlays  approached  each  other  within 
one-seventh   of   one    per   cent.     In    an    expenditure,  in 

1  "  The  Taxation  of  Corporations,"  E.  R.  A.  Seligman,  Political 
Science  Quarterly,  vol.  v.pp.  269,  138,636, 


4f)0  CIVICS. 

round  numbers,  of  ninety  millions  of  pounds,  twenty- 
seven  are  derived  from  excises  on  liquor  and  tobacco ; 
twenty  from  customs  on  a  small  number  of  articles ; 
fifteen  from  an  income  tax  ;  while  the  post-office  and 
associated  services  yield  sixteen  millions. 

The  multiplicity  and  variability  of  taxation  with  us 
arise  from  the  number  of  centres  from  which  it  springs, 
the  want  of  any  sustained  effort  to  make  it  systematic, 
and  the  great  number  of  separate  purposes  involved  in 
it.  The  burdens  imposed  by  the  general  government 
and  its  expenditures  bear  but  a  loose  relation  to  each 
other,  and  extravagance  with  us  is  a  constant  product 
of  excessive  taxation ;  and  excessive  taxation,  in  turn, 
of  lavish  expenditure. 

Reform  must  come  first  from  a  recognition  of  the 
great  evils  of  our  present  method,  from  a  separation  of 
taxation  from  alien  and  conflicting  purposes,  and  from 
a  more  careful  adaptation  of  taxes  to  the  local  centres 
from  which  they  spring,  —  towns,  cities,  States,  and  gen- 
eral government.  Our  local  divisions  give  rise  to  un- 
systematic methods,  but  are  not  necessarily  inconsistent 
with  proximate  justice. 

Some  taxes,  as  customs  and  excises,  necessarily  re- 
main with  the  general  government ;  customs  as  resting 
with  commerce,  and  excises  as  equalizing  the  burdens 
of  production  in  the  several  States.  An  income  tax, 
as  a  proper  source  of  a  large  revenue,  as  demanding 
especially  independence  and  power  in  its  successful 
imposition,  and  as  leaving  the  advantages  of  residence 
in  the  several  States  the  same,  would  advantageously 
fall  to  the  general  government.  Taxes  on  corporations, 
as  a  means  of  enforcing  the  income  tax,  as  frequently 


TAXATION.  4ol 

resting  on  forms  of  business  that  are  carried  on  in  sev- 
eral States,  as  intimately  connected  with  interstate 
commerce,  and  as  calling  for  a  wide  and  uniform  method, 
might  well  be  left  to  the  same  authority. 

Taxes  on  inheritance  naturally  rest  with  the  States. 
It  is  in  the  courts  of  the  State  that  the  transfer  takes 
place  ;  it  is  with  the  State  that  the  acquisition  of  the 
property  under  consideration  is  chiefly  connected.  Li- 
censes, also,  are  best  adjusted  to  local  wants  and  local 
opinion  by  the  State.  Real  estate  falls  naturally  to 
towns  and  cities  as  their  most  direct  resource,  as  part 
and  parcel  of  local  interests,  and  as  yielding  a  tax  im- 
posed in  these  narrow  communities  with  more  equality. 

The  sum  of  taxes  in  the  United  States  is  not  much 
below  a  thousand  million  dollars.1  If  a  quarter  of  this 
amount  fell  on  incomes,  a  quarter  upon  customs,  and 
half  upon  real  estate,  we  should  reach  a  result  still  un- 
just, but  far  more  just  than  can  be  hoped  for  in  a  long 
period.  The  poor,  paying  customs  indiscriminately  — 
or  with  only  very  partial  discrimination  —  with  the  rich, 
would  still  be  overtaxed  ;  and  the  rich,  taking  an  income 
tax  chiefly  to  themselves,  would  still  fail  to  bear  their 
full  share.  Real  estate  as  contrasted  with  personal 
property  would  be  unduly  burdened.  The  income  tax 
would  do  something  to  correct  this  discrepancy;  and  a 
large  part  of  the  tax  on  real  estate,  having  been  borne 
for  many  years,  has  disappeared,  as  a  present  exaction, 
in  the  constitution  of  things. 

There  is  likely  to  remain  for  long  an  intense  collid- 


LOCAL    TAXATION. 

FEDERAL   TAX  Alios 

1  1880    . 

.     .    $312,750,721 

$310,531,373 

1890     . 

.    .    $470,051,1)27 

$372,275,289 

452  civics. 

ing  of  passion,  prejudice,  and  patriotism  ;  of  justice 
and  the  exactions  of  classes  ;  of  what  has  been  and  what 
ought  to  be,  at  this  point  of  taxation.  Free  institutions 
rather  increase  than  diminish  this  clash  of  conflicting 
interests.  The  recent  decision  of  the  Supreme  Court 
in  reference  to  direct  taxes,  by  divesting  the  general 
government  of  its  power  and  responsibility  in  the  whole 
subject  of  taxation,  takes  on  the  magnitude  of  a  na- 
tional calamity. 


POLITICAL   PARTIES.  453 


CHAPTER  VIII. 

THE    STATE    AS    ADMINISTERED    BY    POLITICAL 

PARTIES. 

§  1.  Political  parties  are  the  unavoidable  instru- 
ments of  administering  and  unfolding  the  government 
in  a  free  state.  Men  are  differently  impressed  by  the 
claims  of  the  present,  and  the  claims  of  the  future ;  by 
the  importance  of  the  forces  which  preserve  society,  and 
of  those  which  carry  it  forward.  These  two  divided 
and  somewhat  antagonistic  estimates  must  be  brought  to 
a  practical  equilibrium  in  achieving  progress.  This  can 
be  accomplished  only  by  the  strenuous  efforts  of  those 
who,  from  interest  or  from  sentiment  or  from  judg- 
ment, support  one  or  other  of  the  two  tendencies.  Men 
of  the  stamp  of  Hamilton  and  Jefferson  respectively 
will  always  be  found  to  concentrate  and  lead  the  sup- 
porters of  each  opinion.  The  forces  in  contention  along 
the  line  of  movement  assume  the  form  of  political 
parties.1 

A  political  party  is  a  combination  of  citizens  for  the 
peaceful  advancement  of  political  principles,  aiming  to 
secure  and  administer  the  government  under  them. 
Factions  precede  parties.  They  are  the  result  of  tyr- 
anny. A  faction  is  a  combination  of  citizens  ready  to 
win  the  government  by   violence,   and   carry   it   on   for 

i  "  History  of  the  Eighteenth  Century  in  England,"  vol.  i.  p.  474; 
vol.  iii.  p.  104. 


454  civics. 

their  own  personal  ends.  In  progressive  periods,  fac- 
tions pass  into  parties ;  in  retrogressive  periods,  parties 
sink  into  factions. 

Parties  arise  inevitably  and  become  necessary  instru- 
ments in  development.  They  assign  the  state,  for  the 
time  being,  its  policy.  The  government  has  constantly 
to  choose  between  methods  of  action  more  or  less  incon- 
sistent with  each  other.  It  cannot  vacillate  between 
them.  This  choice  will  be  determined  by  the  political 
party  in  power.  The  choice  expresses  the  dominance, 
at  least  for  the  present,  in  the  minds  of  the  people,  of 
certain  principles  of  action. 

A  party,  by  taking  complete  possession  of  the  govern- 
ment, gives  harmony  and  consistency  to  its  administra- 
tion. An  administration  that  strives  to  include  persons 
of  radically  diverse  political  views  is  sure  to  result  in 
strife,  in  weakness,  and  to  open  the  way  for  the  tri- 
umph of  one  or  the  other  tendency.  Thus,  in  England, 
in  the  eighteenth  century,  the  cabinet  came  slowly  to  be 
of  one  stripe,  as  an  essential  condition  of  success.  The 
administration  of  Washington,  combining  men  of  oppo- 
site opinions,  Avas  characterized  by  bitter  contention,  and 
gave  place  to  the  complete  predominance  of  the  one  or 
of  the  other  party. 

While  a  conservative  and  a  liberal  tendency  underlie 
parties,  the  immediate  point  of  separation  depends  on 
circumstances.  Parties  in  England  have  been  chiefly 
occupied,  for  a  long  time,  with  the  extension  of  the 
power  of  the  people,  and  in  adapting  laws  to  popular 
wants.  The  United  States  started  with  extended  free- 
dom, with  almost  universal  suffrage.  There  was  little 
occasion  for  conflict  in  this  direction.     The  jealousy  of 


POLITICAL   PARTIES.  455 

the  people  was  directed  toward  any  extension  of  the 
power  of  government,  more  particularly  of  the  general 
government.  An  extreme  individualism  ruled  the  pop- 
ular mind.  The  one  point  of  difference  in  the  United 
States  between  political  parties  has  been  a  different  esti- 
mate of  the  functions  of  government,  of  what  it  can 
Avisely  undertake.  The  strife  between  the  Federalists 
and  the  Republicans  turned  on  the  power  to  be  com- 
mitted to  the  new  government;  between  the  Whigs  and 
the  Democrats,  on  the  things  to  be  undertaken  by  the 
state ;  and  between  the  Republicans  and  the  Democrats, 
on  the  control  to  be  exercised  over  the  extension  of 
slavery,  and,  later,  in  other  directions.  The  uniform 
tendency  of  radical  parties  has  been  to  enlarge  the  func- 
tions of  the  state  ;  of  the  conservative  party,  ■ —  Republi- 
can, Democratic-Republican,  Democratic  —  to  resist  this 
growth  of  authority.  Collective  energy  -  -  liable  to  pass 
into  privilege  -  -  has  been  the  ideal  of  one  side  ;  personal 
liberty  --  readily  degenerating  into  disorganization  — 
has  been  the  ideal  of  the  other  side. 

Neither  party  has  been  able  to  hold  power  for  any 
considerable  period  without  a  conspicuous  betrayal  of  its 
inherent  weakness.  Thus  the  national  bank,  at  first  an 
acceptable  and  profitable  instrument  with  the  Federal- 
ist s  of  restoring  the  public  credit,  began,  at  length,  to 
disclose  the  taint  of  extended  personal  interests  nour- 
ished l>y  the  state.  Protection,  pursued  by  Whigs  and 
Republicans,  has  degenerated  into  a  wide,  unscrupulous 
struggle  between  powerful  productive  interests  to  win  in 
law  the  upper  hand. 

On  the  oilier  hand,  the  conservative  party,  essentially 
one  in  all  its  forms,  betrayed  its  incurable  weakness  in 


456  civics. 

the  war  of  1812,  and  absolutely  fell  to  pieces  in  the 
presence  of  the  Civil  War.  Now  that  it  has  regained 
power,  after  the  lapse  of  a  third  of  a  century,  its  hesi- 
tancy and  feebleness  are  at  once  conspicuous.  Squatter 
sovereignty  and  local  option  have  been  the  rivals  with  it 
of  the  sovereignty  of  the  state.  Yet  the  Democratic 
party,  in  spite  of  its  chronic  weakness,  —  perhaps  by 
means  of  it  —  has  at  times  rendered  most  valuable  ser- 
vice in  checking  the  growth  of  power,  which  had  lost 
sight  of  the  interests  committed  to  it.  Parties  in  the 
United  States,  as  contrasted  with  those  of  England,  are 
turned  end  for  end.  The  conservative  tendency  with 
us  means  checking  government  in  behalf  of  the  unre- 
strained action  of  the  people ;  in  England,  it  means 
retaining  institutions  which  shelter  privileged  classes. 
The  radical  impulse  in  the  United  States  stands  for  a 
disposition  to  make  the  government  a  more  powerful 
instrument  in  the  promotion  of  the  public  welfare  ;  in 
England,  for  a  reduction,  and  later  a  redirection,  of  the 
power  of  the  state  as  hitherto  administered. 

§  2.  There  are  two  ways  in  which  political  parties 
displace  each  other  :  by  failure  in  legislation,  as  in  Eng- 
land ;  and  by  failure  in  election,  as  in  the  United 
States.  The  first  is  the  cabinet  system,  a  growth,  and 
not  a  device.  It  has  many  advantages.  A  definite 
policy  is  the  constant  demand  laid  upon  the  party. 
The  absence  of  a  policy,  or  an  unwise  policy,  results 
at  once  in  overthrow.  There  are  no  long  periods  dur- 
ing which  a  party  holds  the  government,  not  knowing 
what  to  do  with  it.  No  political  method  could  possibly 
secure  more  rapid  and  continuous  progress,  progress 
closely  associated  with  the  convictions  of  the  people. 


POLITICAL   PARTIES.  457 

The  changes  in  England,  in  the  last  seventy  years, 
have  been  marvellous  in  their  number,  their  quietness, 
and  their  success. 

The  cabinet  system  unites  the  people  and  their  legis- 
lators far  more  closely,  in  the  pursuit  of  their  common 
interests,  than  does  the  system  of  election.  There  are 
no  long,  lax  intervals  of  suspended  responsibility  be- 
tween elections.  Every  moment  is  critical.  The  public 
attention  is  concentrated  on  specific  measures  in  every 
step  of  their  progress.  The  right  thing  must  be  done, 
and  done  at  the  right  time.  Public  opinion  is  in  no 
other  way  so  stimulated  and  kept  up  to  its  work. 

The  opposition  is  not  so  much  weakened  by  continu- 
ous defeat.  It  performs  its  function  constantly  in 
broad  daylight,  prospers  by  the  skill  and  wisdom  with 
which  this  is  done,  and  is  itself  taught  by  the  progress 
of  events.  There  is  not  the  same  opportunity  for  an 
accumulation  of  errors  as  in  the  elective  system ;  for  a 
confusion  of  ideas,  in  which  neither  party  knows  its 
purposes  ;  for  the  substitution  of  the  chicanery  of  elec- 
tions for  diligence  and  success  in  legislation;  for  making 
the  promises  of  a  platform  take  the  place  of  perform- 
ance. The  responsibility  of  Parliament  is  as  nearly 
complete  as  possible,  and  verges  toward  an  undue  rapid- 
ity of  movement.  In  the  United  States  we  follow  lan- 
guidly the  progress  of  events  in  Congress,  because  they 
are  often  so  obscure  in  the  motives  and  methods  em- 
ployed, and  because  frequently  so  little  conies  of  them. 
We  keep  still  and  take  our  chances,  as  only  too  poor 
at  best. 

The  cabinet  system  is  unrivalled  in  maintaining  the 
lead  of  ideas,  in  the  ease   with  which  new  ideas  are 


458  civics. 

introduced,  in  the  vitality  it  imparts  to  the  entire  move- 
ment, and  in  the  degree  in  which  people  and  rulers  are 
identified  as  a  nation,  the  government  being  their  com- 
mon organ.  It  fails  only  when  parties,  unduly  subdi- 
vided, refuse  to  act  together  under  leading  principles, 
and  are  factious  in  opposition  to  each  other.  This  evil 
has  rendered  the  method  but  partially  successful  in 
France.  There  is  no  broad  basis  for  any  policy  to  rest 
upon. 

§  3.  Our  elective  system  grew  naturally,  as  a  devised 
method,  out  of  the  voluntary  character  of  our  institu- 
tions. "We  can  escape  its  difficulties  only  by  clearly 
seeing  them.  While  Ave  accept  a  certain  obligation  to 
party  ties  as  essential  means  of  government,  we  have 
still  more  occasion  to  mark  the  limits  of  these  obli- 
gations, and  to  maintain  our  personal  freedom  under 
them.  We  owe  allegiance  to  a  political  party  chiefly, 
almost  exclusively,  from  our  sense  of  its  immediate 
relation  to  the  public  welfare.  A  party  that  offers  us 
the  most  available  means  of  securing  good  government 
has  upon  us  the  claims  that  arise  from  this  relation. 

At  times,  also,  the  combining  power  of  a  community 
may  be  unduly  weak,  —  with  us  it  is  more  likely  to 
be  unduly  strong  —  and  we  may  be  called  on  to  accept 
a  defective  form  of  co-operation  rather  than  allow  it 
to  dissolve  away  altogether.  The  historic  tendencies 
of  a  party,  though  for  the  moment  they  seem  to  be 
baffled,  may  count  for  something  in  our  estimate  of  pos- 
sibilities. Yet  the  fundamental  truth  remains,  that 
parties  are  to  be  estimated  simply  by  their  relation  to 
the  public  welfare.  Their  value,  whatever  it  may  be, 
is  derived  from  it. 


POLITICAL   PARTIES.  459 

Here  is  the  great  difficulty.  Political  parties  con- 
stantly assert  themselves,  aside  from  the  service  they 
are  rendering.  They  become  independent  entities,  a 
separate  source  of  obligations.  Parties  readily  lose  the 
principles  in  behalf  of  which  they  were  first  organized. 
The  primary  purpose  may  have  been  accomplished,  or 
may  have  passed  by.  The  party  organized  in  its  behalf 
may  still  cohere  by  its  simply  organic  ties,  and  so  be- 
come a  body  wielding  power  with  no  ruling  object. 
The  party  fails  to  disband  when  its  purpose  has  been 
fulfilled,  and  so  falls  into  mischief.  The  Whigs  in 
England  lost  their  primary  end  by  the  firm  establish- 
ment of  the  House  of  Hanover ;  the  Whigs  in  the 
United  States  adhered  to  protection  and  internal  im- 
provements till  the  more  weighty  question  of  slavery 
drove  these  issues  into  the  background.  The  Repub- 
licans, organized  in  resistance  of  the  extension  of  sla- 
very, carried  that  controversy  forward  to  a  successful 
settlement,  and  then  were  left  without  a  policy.  There 
is  a  marked  difference  between  a  radical  and  a  con- 
servative party  in  this  demand  for  definite  measures. 
It  falls  to  the  radical  party  to  take  the  initiative ;  it 
must,  therefore,  be  prepared  to  make  distinct  issues 
relevant  to  the  time.  The  conservative  party  stands  on 
the  defensive,  and  takes  its  position  only  in  reference 
to  the  position  of  its  opponents.  Like  an  army  at- 
tacked, it  faces  about  to  meet  the  charge.  Its  prin- 
ciples are  always  with  it,  being  primarily  those  of 
resistance;  they  are,  therefore,  less  explicit,  less  change- 
able, than  those  of  the  progressive  party.  Its  members 
drift  together  by  virtue  of  resist  ful,  sluggish  sentiments 
they  share  in  common.     Such  a  party,  with  secondary 


460  CIVICS. 

changes,  may  endure  indefinitely.  It  is  not  compelled 
to  go  in  search  of  principles.  Its  principles  are  per- 
manently present  in  the  inertia  of  society.  Thus  the 
change  of  designation  in  the  Democratic  party  has  been 
a  shifting  of  words  rather  than  of  characteristics. 

Parties,  radical  parties,  take  up  new  principles  with 
difficulty.  They  have  been  organized  for  a  specific  pur- 
pose. The  members  of  such  a  party  may  readily  en- 
tertain a  variety  of  opinions  on  any  new  issue.  Such  an 
issue,  when  raised,  will  weaken  the  party  and  endanger 
its  success.  Having  become  accustomed  to  power,  it  is 
not  ready  to  go  down  a  second  time  into  the  valley  of 
humiliation,  and  fight  its  way  up  once  more  under  new 
banners.  The  result  often  is,  as  in  the  case  of  the 
Republicans,  that  a  radical  party  refuses  to  let  a  conflict 
really  accomplished  pass  by ;  it  waves  the  "  bloody 
shirt "  when  nothing  but  mischief  can  come  of  it.  It 
declines  settlement  and  engenders  strife  as  a  condition 
of  its  own  prolonged  power.  The  difficulty  with  which 
.a  party  meets  in  making  up  new  issues  is  seen  in  the 
very  slow  way  in  which  the  Republicans  accepted  the 
policy  of  protection,  and  in  their  present  confusion  and 
division  on  questions  touching  the  currency. 

Political  parties  fall  more  and  more  into  the  hands  of 
politicians,  men  who  have  a  talent  for  political  manage- 
ment. In  the  early  history  of  a  party,  men  of  ideas 
and  of  devotion  to  them  are  in  the  foreground.  It  is 
these  principles  that  are  the  cohesive  power.  As  suc- 
cess is  achieved,  these  men  are  satisfied,  and  relax  their 
efforts.  The  battle  has  been  fought  and  won.  Men  of 
less  principle  flock  in  to  share  the  success.  Men  whose 
gifts  lie  in  organizing  and  controlling  a  political  party 


POLITICAL   PARTIES.  461 

Come  to  the  front.  They  gradually  and  impercep- 
tibly secure  the  lead.  Before  any  one  is  fairly  aware 
of  it,  the  methods  and  objects  of  the  organization 
are  changed.  The  "grand  old  party"  becomes  the 
instrument  of  personal  ambitions,  in  the  hands  of  un- 
scrupulous politicians.  These  leaders  use  more  freely 
than  ever  the  familiar  watchwords,  and  the  mass  of 
its  members  think  themselves  still  in  the  beaten  paths 
of  patriotism.  "  Demagogues  bribe  classes,  not  persons  ;  " 
and  the  politician  bribes  the  good  citizen  to  obedience 
by  the  continuous  success  of  his  beloved  party.  The 
history  of  the  past  is  rehearsed  with  pride,  and  each  new 
victory  is  thought  to  be  added  to  the  same  glorious 
record. 

Good  men  and  independent  are  more  and  more  ex- 
cluded from  the  counsels  of  the  party.  The  best  men 
are  liable  to  be  somewhat  refractory  to  begin  with,  and, 
like  Charles  Sumner,  yield,  and  secure,  a  somewhat  uncer- 
tain allegiance.  Freedom  and  decision  of  thought  are 
in  order  as  long  as  the  rallying  cry  is  for  principles 
not  yet  accepted.  In  this  period,  boldness  is  impressive, 
and  success  is  not  endangered  by  it.  When,  however, 
the  party  has  begun  to  achieve  power,  and  the  lead 
is  passing  into  the  possession  of  politicians,  the  case  is 
wholly  altered.  Nothing  is  so  unmanageable  by  this 
class,  or  so  liable  to  disturb  their  calculations,  as  ideas, 
and  men  who  independently  pursue  them.  The  fittest 
man  has  now  become  the  shrewdest,  most  concessive, 
most  tricky  man,  the  man  who  sees  at  once  the  means 
of  immediate  success,  and  unhesitatingly  pursues  them. 
Men  of  the  stamp  of  Lowell  and  Schurz  lose  hold  on 
the  party,  and  are  either  cast  out  of  it,  or  encisted  inside 


402  civics. 

of  it.  The  entrances  to  political  power  become  too  low 
and  too  narrow  to  suit  the  haughty  carriage  and  free 
movement  of  self-contained  men.  Indeed,  there  is  no 
longer  any  demand  for  that  kind  of  folk,  but  for  those 
who  give  and  withhold  in  reference  to  victory.  There 
is  a  steady  reduction  of  a  commanding  personality  in 
leaders,  and  a  substitution  of  skill,  adroitness,  duplicity. 

These  changes  within  the  party  are  accompanied  by 
corresponding  changes  without  it.  Persons  who  have 
interests  and  influence  gather  in  force  and  take  part  in 
the  counsel  of  the  party.  They  have  things  to  buy  and 
things  to  sell,  and  here  is  the  market.  As  is  the  legis- 
lature, so  is  the  lobby ;  and  the  lobby  as  one  whole 
means  those  who  are  turning  legislation  aside  from  the 
public  welfare  into  obscure  paths  of  personal  prosperity. 
A  sugar  trust  succeeds  in  its  corrupt  purpose  by  secret 
methods  in  the  very  teeth  of  the  nation.  In  our  later 
tariff  legislation,  the  principles  on  which  protection 
may  be  urged  as  a  national  policy  have  been  simply 
the  painted  curtain  behind  which. the  busy  politician  is 
preparing  the  stage  for  another  scenic  effect,  another 
dramatic  victory. 

There  follows  from  these  secret  influences,  which  in- 
creasingly take  possession  of  politics,  a  growing  inability 
for  real  counsel.  The  construction  of  platforms  which 
are  nothing  more  than  the  devices  of  banners ;  the  nomi- 
nation of  officers  in  a  caucus  where  the  politicians  rule ; 
the  choice  of  the  officers  in  an  election  where  the  people 
are  led  in  ways  unknown  to  themselves ;  the  dividing  of 
the  spoils  of  victory,  —  these  are  the  things  which  are 
made  to  constitute  the  life  of  the  nation.  Politics  so 
ordered  sink  into  utter  worthlessness,  as  contrasted  with 


POLITICAL   PARTIES.  468 

the  real  push  of  the  minds  and  hearts  of  the  people,  led 
on  to  a  true  conflict  by  the  ablest  men  of  the  nation 
under  a  cabinet  system.  The  caucus  is  the  instrument 
of  the  politician,  is  designed  to  anticipate  counsel,  and 
put  intrigue  in  its  place.  Is  there  any  important  and 
doubtful  measure  about  to  come  before  Congress,  in 
which  deliberation  is  peculiarly  fit,  a  party  caucus  is 
called  to  determine  in  advance  the  policy  of  the  party. 
Statesmanship  is  forestalled  ;  conscripts  are  marshalled 
in  the  halls  of  Congress  to  do  the  bidding  of  political 
captains. 

Nor  is  the  political  manager  willing  to  confine  these 
methods  to  the  fields  with  which  they  are  more  directly 
associated.  The  party  drill  must  be  extended  to  local 
elections,  that  the  army  may  be  kept  in  form,  and  the 
area  of  spoils  enlarged.  Our  cities  owe  much  of  their 
misgovernment  to  relations  in  politics  which  do  not  con- 
cern their  own  interests.  Political  parties,  as  they  gain 
development,  steadily  exclude  individual  liberty  in  all 
the  methods  of  its  exercise. 

A  political  party  cannot  reach  the  stage  in  which  it  is 
sinking  into  the  hands  of  politicians  without  giving 
occasion  to  extended  and  systematic  corruption.  Its 
temper,  an  unscrupulous  struggle  for  success,  is  in  keep- 
ing with  corruption.  The  spores  are  in  the  air,  and  the 
soil  is  ready  for  them.  The  only  question  is  one  of 
form  and  degree.  It  may  be  a  corruption  starting  with 
the  voter.  The  lower  classes  may  be  debauched,  led 
downward  into  sordidness  and  drunkenness.  The  edu- 
cating power  of  free  institutions  is  their  chief  merit.  If 
this  is  perverted,  turned  in  the  wrong  direction,  there  is 
a  rapid  accumulation  of  evil.     In  some  communities  the 


464  civics. 

sale  of  votes  extends  to  a  large  portion  of  the  popula- 
tion.1 Cities  whose  politics  centre  in  saloons  suffer  a 
steady  degradation,  till  the  officers  of  the  law  affiliate 
with  the  vicious  and  criminal  classes,  maintaining  that 
degree  of  good  order  which  best  subserves  their  own 
interests.  The  Lincoln  Committee  in  Philadelphia  sent 
out  150,000  election  tickets  to  voters  taken  from  the 
official  register ;  15,000  were  returned,  marked  "  not 
found."  A  corruption  of  this  sort  becomes  so  well  or- 
ganized and  so  complete,  that  nothing  but  convulsive, 
revolutionary  throes  can  break  it  up ;  even  then  it  is 
likely  to  quickly  regain  its  power.  The  exhortation  to 
the  ordinary  citizen,  under  such  circumstances,  to  per- 
form his  duty  to  the  public,  becomes  meaningless.  It 
is  impossible  for  him  to  render  any  effective  service. 
The  doors  closed  against  free  suffrage  and  honest  consul- 
tation can  only  be  forced  open  by  an  attack  as  extended 
and  well-organized  as  the  combination  for  defence. 

The  corruption  may  take  the  form  of  contribution  to 
election  expenses.  The  men  who  make  these  contribu- 
tions secure  thereby  a  claim,  either  on  office  or  on  legis- 
lation, which  they  are  not  slow  to  push,  and  which, 
being  puslxed,  cannot  well  be  resisted.  Offices,  con- 
tracts, laws,  are  indirectly  sold  at  every  stage  of  the 
political  movement. 

Trusts,  like  the  Sugar  Trust,  have  a  hold  on  either 
party  which  they  are  unable  to  shake  off.  Offices  that 
are  secured  by  corruption  are  not  likely  to  be  purely 
administered.     The   party  that  wins   power  at  the  ex- 

1  "Alarming  Proportion  of  Venal  Voters,"  J.  J.  McCook,  Forum, 
September,  1892;  "  Venal  Voting:  Methods  and  Remedies,"  J.  J. 
McCook,  Forum,  October,  1892. 


POLITICAL   PA  It  TIES.  405 

pense  of  public  virtue  will  administer  power  in  the  same 
spirit.  The  expenses  of  our  elections  have  become  very- 
great.  The  mayor  of  New  York  .lias  paid  as  high  as 
$25,000  for  his  election,  and  other  officers  even  more. 
The  annual  cost  of  elections  in  Xew  York  City  is  esti- 
mated at  $700,000.  In  Connecticut  the  presidential 
campaign  costs  each  party  some  $400,000,  Avhile  the 
cost  to  the  United  States  is  $10,000,000.  These  ex- 
penses tend  to  a  rapid  increase.  The  magnitude  of  the 
interests  involved,  and  familiarity  with  corruption,  make 
the  leaders  ever  more  bold  and  unscrupulous.  The  de- 
cline from  integrity  in  fraudulent  methods  is  a  rapid 
one. 

There  attends  on  this  corruption  the  steady  growth  of 
an  irrational  partisan  temper.  It  is  by  playing  upon 
this  feeling,  not  by  sound  reasons,  that  politicians  thrive. 
Young  men  are  organized  into  clubs,  and  stand  waiting 
the  word  of  command.  The  disposition  to  hold  blindly 
to  one's  own  affiliations,  only  too  strong  in  men,  is  con- 
stantly appealed  to.  Any  hesitancy,  any  exercise  of 
private  judgment,  are  stigmatized  as  treachery,  and  vis- 
ited with  all  the  punishment  within  reach.  A  man  once 
a  partisan  is  expected  to  remain  a  partisan  all  his  life. 
His  manhood  is  held  in  suspension  in  the  presence  of  his 
party.  The  rank  and  file  of  a  great  party  are  ruled  in 
the  most  absolute  way.  A  few  party  catchwords  suffice 
to  carry  them  forward  in  the  pursuit  of  purposes  they 
do  not  understand,  or,  understanding,  would  heartily 
reject.  Prejudice,  misrepresentation,  and  empty  phrases 
confound  all  knowledge. 

From  this  partisan  temper  springs  the  double  dealing 
of  platforms.     The  platform  is  addressed  to  the  ear,  and 


466  civics. 

not  the  understanding.  It  opens  with  an  indiscriminate, 
and  often  untrue,  condemnation  of  the  doings  of  the  op- 
posite party,  and  then  lays  out  for  itself  a  captivating 
programme  of  action,  which  equally  lacks  substance  and 
truth.  Before  an  election,  the  party  is  liberal  in  prom- 
ises in  all  directions  in  which  votes  can  be  gained ;  after 
the  election,  it  is  slow  in  performance,  because  no  prin- 
ciples underlie  the  pledge,  and  because  it  feels  it  safer 
to  forget  the  obligation  than  to  encounter  the  opposition 
which  its  fulfilment  would  call  out.  Thus  the  Demo- 
cratic party  has  been  chiefly  thwarted  by  its  own  mem- 
bers in  its  revision  of  the  tariff,  and  been  able  to  put  to 
no  adequate  service  the  power  it  has  won.  Civil  service 
has  been  repeatedly  accepted  in  theory,  and  betrayed  in 
practice,  by  both  parties.  A  distinguished  senator  from 
Vermont  favored  a  prohibition  plank  in  the  state  plat- 
form, and  aided  in  maintaining  a  bar  in  the  Capitol.  All 
things  to  all  men,  that  we  may  make  a  little  out  of  each, 
is  the  politician's  rendering  of  wisdom. 

If  we  add  to  this  dishonesty  of  platforms  the  dis- 
honesty of  political  organs  in  their  statements  of  facts, 
in  their  attack  and  defence,  we  see  how  far  the  possi- 
bility of  understanding  the  grounds  of  action  is  beyond 
the  average  citizen.  He  looks  to  the  papers  and  leaders 
of  his  own  party  for  guidance,  and  they  fling  over  him 
a  voluminous  network  of  misrepresentations.  Thus  he 
is  entangled  in  a  discussion  on  the  tariff,  in  which  the 
principles  enforced  and  the  facts  affirmed  have  very 
little  relation  to  the  exact  things  that  are  about  to  be 
done  in  Congress.  He  votes  for  a  theory  and  gets  a 
shameless  perversion  of  it. 

Not  only  does  the  control  of  a  party  pass  into  the 


POLITICAL   PARTIES.  4»>7 

hands  of  politicians  ;  a  natural  selection  is  set  up  within 
the  class  itself  by  which  the  most  adroit,  dark,  and  dis- 
honest man  distances  all  the  rest.  The  National  Com- 
mittee must  be  made  up  of  men  who  understand  every 
method  of  success,  and  will  choose  between  them  solely 
in  reference  to  victory.  Men  of  more  character,  who 
have  a  decided  choice  of  methods,  must  stand  aside,  and 
be  content  to  sanction  and  grace  by  their  presence  the 
objectionable  methods  of  their  dishonest  associates. 
Power  gravitates  toward  the  most  corrupt  politician,  as 
"  revolution  falls  into  the  hands  of  the  worse  men." 
This  tendency  is  universal.  A  large  religious  body 
comes  at  once  under  the  influence  of  those  who  give 
clearest  expression  to  its  conventional  belief,  to  those 
whose  personality  is  embodied  in  familiar  sentiments 
and  expressed  in  prevailing  catchwords.  It  is  dim- 
cult  for  a  man  capable  of  giving  counsel  to  gain  a  hear- 
ing. The  men  who  are  to  guide  the  party  must  be 
instruments  of  the  party,  and  make  the  party  their 
instrument. 

Any  moral  obliquit3T,  if  it  is  somewhat  in  the  back- 
ground, has  little  power  to  effect  party  leaders.  Men 
become  tolerant  of  vice  in  them,  as  they  were  toler- 
ant of  vice  in  Napoleon.  One  may  be  given  a  seat  in 
the  Cabinet  because  he  raised,  in  a  sudden  emergency, 
a  large  corruption  fund,  and  the  public  still  remains 
edified  by  a  rehearsal  of  his  work  in  Sunday-school. 
Public  vices  and  private  virtues  ai'e  woven  into  one 
chaplet  to  crown  his  achievement.  In  politics,  when 
sonic  plain  moral  principle  gets  assertion  as  a  "higher 
law,"  it  has  all  the  effect  of  a-  discovery,  and  marks  an 
era.      Politics,    like    war,    is    thought    to    involve    an    ex- 


468  civics. 

tended  suspension  of  moral  obligations.  If  tins  sus- 
pension is  complete  enough,  and  long  enough,  parties 
sink  into  factions,  and  we  have  the  record  of  a  South 
American  republic.  In  the  election  of  President  Hayes 
we  trembled  on  the  verge  of  this  decline.     . 

Each  party  is  willing  to  increase  the  embarrassments 
of  the  opposite  party,  and  then  to  use  the  failures  thus 
occasioned  as  a  reason  against  it.  Xot  only  is  there  an 
indiscriminate  charge  of  all  disasters  on  the  party  in 
power,  though  they  may  be  the  obvious  consequences  of 
an  earlier  policy  ;  the  minority,  as  at  the  last  session  of 
Congress,  feel  at  liberty  to  bring  purely  factious  opposi- 
tion to  the  passage  of  laws  which  lie  in  direct  fulfil- 
ment of  the  wishes  of  the  people  as  expressed  at  the 
polls.  The  Republicans  were  disposed  to  compel  the 
Democrats  to  maintain  a  quorum  from  their  own  mem- 
bers ;  to  decline  the  most  natural  and  inevitable  conse- 
quence of  their  presence  in  the  House  as  legislators ; 
and  virtually  to  take  the  ground  that  the  supreme  obli- 
gation resting  on  them  was  to  embarrass  the  party  in 
power.  The  interests  of  the  nation  and  the  intention  of 
the  nation  are  subordinated  to  those  of  the  party.  A 
boat  cannot  make  progress  if  each  of  two  oarsmen  insist 
on  rowing  in  opposite  directions,  if  it  is  the  function  of 
each  to  make  worthless  the  efforts  of  the  other.  A 
nation  governed  and  guided  in  this  fashion  can  make  no 
adequate  test  of  any  policy,  can  pursue  successfully  no 
public  purpose.  It  is  strange  that  any  good  citizen 
should  justify  such  a  method.  A  fact  of  this  order 
shows  the  blinding  power  of  the  partisan  temper. 

Yet  the  two  parties  are  often  in  collusion  with  each 
other.     When  the  safest  way  to  the  spoils  of  office  is 


POLITICAL    PARTIES.  469 

a  quiet  bi-partisan  division,  they  cheerfully  accept  the 
arrangement.  When  a  citizen's  ticket  threatens  to 
sweep  away  the  abuses  of  party  administration,  the 
party  out  of  power  will  embarrass  the  movement  by  a 
regular  nomination.  The  parties  are  like  two  gamblers, 
who  have  their  own  bickerings,  but  are  united  against 
any  outside  interference. 

It  thus  becomes  most  difficult  to  organize  a  third 
party,  to  initiate  and  carry  forward  any  thorough  cor- 
rection, to  raise  any  new  issue,  or  bring  honest  men  to 
the  front.  Both  parties  feel  at  once  the  danger,  and 
unite  in  making  the  effort  unsuccessful.  In  Massachu- 
setts, the  ballot  law  has  received  a  form  which  com- 
pelled a  party  numbering  nine  thousand  voters  or  less 
to  endure  a  cumbersome  and  vexatious  procedure  as  a 
condition  for  the  admission  of  their  candidates  to  the 
ballot.1  What  can  be  done  by  shifting  one's  vote  from 
party  to  party  —  and  it  is  not  very  much  when  both 
parties  are  unsatisfactory  —  may  be  done ;  but  he  who 
attempts  to  organize  a  new  party  enters  on  a  costly  and 
wearisome  effort,  whose  success  may  be  in  no  way  pro- 
portioned to  its  merit.  A  first  condition  of  genuine 
deliberation  and  free  execution  is  easy  combination,  yet 
with  us  the  difficulties  of  political  combination  are  so 
great  as  to  be  in  most  cases  insuperable.  The  people 
have  no  liberty  in  the  premises.  They  stumble  on 
under  the  leadership  of  men  they  have  never  truly 
chosen,  and  when  they  form  any  definite  purpose  are 
baffled  in  its  fulfilment.  Yet  we  are  pleased  to  call 
this  liberty. 

An  evil  that  is  sure  ultimately  to  spring   up  under 

1  This  law  has  now  been  changed, 


470  civics. 

this  political  management,  though  it  has  not  yet  shown 
itself  to  any  great  extent  with  us,  is  the  substitution 
of  persons  for  principles.  The  dropping  off  from  prin- 
ciples is  seen  in  the  want  of  loyalty  of  the  people  to 
their  leading  statesmen.  This  is  sure  to  be  followed 
by  a  blind  adhesion  to  any  leader  who,  like  "  Jim 
Blaine,"  has  a  taking  personality.  This  subjection  to 
persons  is  a  last  stage  in  degeneracy  in  a  democracy. 

Political  parties  that  are  suffering  this  interior  decay 
cannot  adequately  perform  their  administrative  work. 
We  have  no  occasion,  during  the  past  twenty  years,  — 
a  period  covered  by  party  politics  with  no  new  organi- 
zation in  behalf  of  progress  —  to  take  any  pride  in  our 
legislation  as  regards  revenue,  finance,  pensions,  or  so- 
cial reform.  We  cannot  secure  sound  legislation,  legis- 
lation as  sound  as  the  intelligence  of  the  nation  would 
justify  us  in  expecting,  when  patient  and  continuous 
counsel  is  repudiated  in  behalf  of  winning  votes.  The 
legislators  are  left  untrained,  the  people  uninstructed, 
and  all  are  subdued  to  a  mean  purpose.  Our  pension 
laws  passed  from  honor  to  dishonor,  because  a  strong 
organized  vote  began  to  appear  in  the  background.  So- 
cial legislation  is  difficult  and  experimental.  It  should 
unite  anticipation  and  caution.  We  undertake  little 
or  nothing  till  an  imperative  demand  comes  from  an 
organized  body;  and  then  Ave  make  blind  concessions, 
as  in  the  case  of  prison  products.  Legislation  is  al- 
most inevitably  bad  that  is  granted  in  the  presence  of 
interested  parties.  Those  most  pronounced,  most  rapa- 
cious, and  frequently  those  who  fail  to  understand  their 
own  measures,  gain  the  foreground.  Legislators  lose  all 
power  to  guide  the  people,  or  to  temper  and  restrain 


POLITICAL   PARTIES.  471 

their  folly.  They  virtually  abdicate  in  behalf  of  any 
combination  of  voters. 

The  ignorant  and  the  selfish  thus  gain  disproportion- 
ate power.  A  compact  and  unscrupulous  vote,  like  that 
controlled  by  the  saloon,  a  vote  that  knows  exactly  what 
it  wishes,  and  sacrifices  all  other  considerations  to  it, 
becomes  well  nigh  omnipotent.  The  politician  has  fur 
more  fear  of  it,  far  less  power  to  mislead  it,  than  he  has 
in  the  presence  of  the  vacillating  opinion  of  a  much 
greater  number'  of  good  citizens.  He  pays  a  deference 
to  determined  evil  which  he  does  not  concede  to  un- 
organized righteousness.  The  politician  looks  down- 
ward, not  upward,  for  his  clews  of  conduct ;  and  he  adds 
the  lessons  of  experience  to  a  constitutional  tendency  to 
underestimate  moral  forces.  This  was  well  illustrated 
in  the  case  of  the  Bennett  Law  in  "Wisconsin.  Neither 
party,  so  far  as  its  political  leaders  were  concerned, 
cared  to  insist  on  adecpiate  English  training  for  the  chil- 
dren of  the  State.  The  moment  an  opposition  was  de- 
veloped which  threatened  a  loss  of  power,  both  parties 
were  equally  glad  to  relegate  into  forgetfulness  the 
troublesome  issue.  The  only  difference  between  them 
lay  in  the  quickness  with  which  they  executed  their 
manoeuvres. 

A  spirit  of  concession  in  making  laws  is  sure  to  be 
accompanied  by  a  spirit  of  negligence  in  enforcing  them. 
The  party  in  power  determines  how  far  a  law  which 
awakens  opposition  shall  be  enforced.  One  interest  is 
conciliated  by  putting  the  law  on  the  statute  book,  an- 
other interest  by  leaving  it  inoperative.  The  mayor  and 
police  of  a  large  city  are  the  real  legislative  body  in 
reference  to  all  laws  in  restraint  of  popular  vices.     They 


472  civics. 

compromise  the  matter,  finding  their  political  profit,  and 
not  infrequently  their  personal  profit,  in  selling  out  the 
law.  Government  thus  becomes,  not  an  execution  of 
righteous  law,  but  a  shrewd,  corrupt  management  of 
conditions  in  which  this  is  only  a  single  item. 

In  a  democracy  which  has  fallen  into  the  hands  of 
political  leaders  the  administration  of  law  becomes  a 
most  deceitful  and  misleading  process.  Instead  of  be- 
ing a  government  of  the  people,  by  the  people,  for 
the  people,  it  becomes  a  government  of  the  politicians, 
by  the  politicians,  for  the  politicians  —  their  power  re- 
tained by  a  perpetual  barter  with  the  most  vicious  and 
the  most  aggressive  classes  in  society.  Government  by 
the  people  does  not  mean  that  a  fraction  of  the  people 
obtains  its  wish,  but  that  the  interests  of  the  people  are 
widely  and  wisely  adjusted  to  one  another  under  sober, 
deliberative  methods.  Vigilance,  eternal  vigilance, 
counsel,  ever-returning  counsel,  are  the  only  safe-guards 
of  liberty.  Political  parties,  as  permanent  administra- 
tive bodies,  are  in  direct  conflict  with  these  conditions 
of  a  free  government.  They  thwart  counsel  and  render 
vigilance  nugatory. 

The  remedies  lie  in  personal  independence,  in  the  pu- 
rity of  elections,  in  breaking  in  every  way  and  at  every 
opportunity  the  fixed  methods  of  the  machine.  There 
is  only  one  remedy  for  bad  government  —  manhood.  A 
political  party,  as  a  self-perpetuating  organization,  is  a 
contrivance  to  subject  the  community  to  every  interest, 
high  or  low,  that  is  clamorous  and  strong.  Citizenship, 
the  honors  of  citizenship,  the  obligations  of  citizenship, 
must  stand  with  us  for  more  than  hitherto,  if  by  means 
of  it  we  are  to  win  good  government.     A  degraded  citj- 


POLITICAL   PARTIES.  473 

zenship,  degraded  in  those  to  whom  its  chief  duties  are 
committed,  degraded  in  the  manner  in  which  those  du- 
ties are  rendered,  degraded  in  those  who  marshal  the 
people  for  action,  means  degraded  government.  Sec- 
ondary evils  are  capable  of  correction  by  a  transfer  of 
allegiance,  but  any  important  political  object  which 
neither  of  the  two  parties  is  willing  to  entertain  can  be 
secured  only  by  a  reformation  of  parties.  This  the  poli- 
ticians can  successfully  resist,  unless  one  or  the  other 
party  has  become  thoroughly  demoralized. 


474  civics. 


CHAPTER  IX. 
INTERNATIONAL   LAW. 

§  1.  The  widest  social  relations  lie  between  nations. 
In  earlier  periods  the  normal  condition  was  one  of  hos- 
tility. Amid  war  and  constantly  shifting  conquest,  few 
international  customs  could  spring  up.  The  interest  in 
behalf  of  which  these  laws  have  chiefly  arisen  has  been 
commerce,  and  the  enforcing  idea  has  been  the  fitness  of 
the  custom.  In  no  direction  have  economic  motives  and 
moral  motives  wrought  more  concurrently  in  social  con- 
struction. The  laws  of  nations  have  no  direct  sanction, 
and  sustain  themselves  by  an  appeal  to  the  sense  of 
right.  Whenever,  as  in  the  wars  of  Napoleon,  the  tem- 
per of  conquest  is  revived,  these  laws  are  extensively 
broken  down.  The  extension  of  one  faith,  Christianity, 
to  civilized  nations,  and  the  permanent  limitations  which 
have  been  put  by  common  consent  on  conquest,  have 
concurred  in  giving  a  permanent  group  of  nations,  with 
relations  favorable  to  treaties,  to  well-defined  principles 
of  action.  These  principles,  generally  accepted,  become 
international  laws. 

They  aim  chiefly  at  two  things,  first  to  reduce  the 
causes  of  war,  restrain*  its  expression,  and  limit  its  evils. 
Commercial  relations  are  accepted  as  the  permanent 
state,  and  are  set  aside  only  in  the  actual  presence  of 
belligerents.  The  second  purpose  has  been  an  extension 
in  each  nation  to  the  subjects  of  other  nations  of  the 


war.  475 

safety  which  belongs  to  its  own  citizens.  Thus  the  con- 
ditions are  secured  for  that  interchange  of  products, 
that  personal  intercourse,  that  communication  of  intel- 
lectual impulses,  which  make  all  nations  partakers  in 
one  development. 

§  2.  War,  which  has  been  from  the  beginning  an  ex- 
pression of  national  life,  and  at  the  same  time  a  severe 
limitation  upon  it,  becomes  increasingly  a  barrier  to 
progress.  Though  it  works  less  devastation,  it  imposes 
heavier  burdens.  The  struggle  has  taken  on  a  semi- 
industrial  character,  and  is  not  so  much  settled  on  the 
battlefield  as  in  preparation  for  it.  At  no  time  hitherto 
has  military  service  reached  so  many  citizens,  or  brought 
with  it  so  extended  taxation  as  now. 

Sociology,  while  fully  recognizing  the  constructive 
part  played  by  war  in  human  history,  cannot  fail  to  see 
that  it  thwarts  incessantly  the  social  forces  now  unfold- 
ing. The  extension  of  social  life  among  men  as  neces- 
sarily excludes  war  as  does  the  organic  life  in  the  body 
drive  out  disease.  The  influences  which  are  to  carry 
peace  with  them  are  those  which  have  already  put  pow- 
erful restraint  on  war.  The  industrial,  commercial  tem- 
per is  opposed  to  war.  The  masses  of  men  have  few 
interests,  and  few  passions  even,  which  are  gratified  by 
war,  especially  in  its  modern  forms.  The  dangers  and 
hardships  are  too  great,  the  conflict  is  too  remote  and 
impersonal,  the  feelings  sacrificed  are  too  extended 
and  tender,  to  make  war  palatable  to  the  middle  classes. 
In  the  degree  in  which  men  by  industry,  by  concurrent 
labor  with  other  classes  and  other  nations,  secure  a  com- 
fortable footing  in  the  economic  world,  are  they  unwill- 
ing to   sacrifice   their    most    habitual    sentiments   to   the 


476  '  civics. 

unfruitful  passions  of  war.  In  the  degree  in  which 
a  prosperous  people  shapes  its  own  policy  will  it  be 
averse  to  war.  This  was  seen  in  our  own  country  in 
the  reluctance  with  which  we  entered  on  the  Civil  War. 
It  is  also  seen  in  the  deaf  ear  we  turn  to  the  claims 
for  an  enlarged  army,  an  improved  navy,  and  increased 
fortifications.  We  are  content  to  take  the  chances  of 
the  future  rather  than  to  burden  the  present  perpetu- 
ally with  the  losses  of  war.  We  have  confidence  that 
a  peaceful  temper  will  maintain  peace. 

The  growing  moral  sense  of  men  works  in  the  same 
direction.  National  prejudices  are  reduced,  national 
pride  becomes  less  exacting,  and  the  range  of  ol •li- 
gation is  enlarged.  The  sympathetic,  the  altruistic, 
temper  is  opposed  to  war,  and  opens  the  mind  to  the 
full  force  of  those  sound  reasons  which  make  against 
it.  This  tendency  is  visible  in  the  comparative  ease  with 
which  arbitration  is  secured.  As  the  Christian  temper 
comes  to  understand  itself,  it  will  feel  that  peace  on 
earth,  good-will  among  men,  is  its  primary  proclamation. 

True  culture  is  productive  of  kindred  results.  The 
most  constant  provocation  to  war  is  the  outlook  which 
military  men  take  of  the  world.  The  world  is,  to  a 
man  whose  training  and  sense  of  power  have  lain  in 
the  conflict  of  intellectual  and  brute  forces,  primarily 
a  place  whose  possibilities  and  suggestions  lie  in  the 
direction  of  war.  Why  should  this  boundary  be  left 
undefended  ?  Why  should  this  advantage  be  let  slip  ? 
Why  should  this  and  this  liability  to  attack  be  allowed 
to  accumulate  ?  Prudence,  safety,  prosperity,  hinge  on 
the  chances  of  war.  Culture  more  and  more  drives  out 
this  phase  of  thought.     The  struggles  of  war  are  less 


WAR.  4?7 

interesting  and  more  revolting.  Society  passes  on 
into  an  intellectual  life,  and  gathers  into  it  many 
interests,  many  pursuits,  which  war  confounds  and  scat- 
ters. The  Elysium  of  the  spirit  ceases  to  admit  the 
tramp  of  the  war-horse.  The  mind  understands  how 
many  things  are  bruised  and  irretrievably  destroyed 
by  it.  War  is  the  intoxication  of  animal  spirits,  and 
men  grow  more  sober,  more  humane.  They  deal  with 
forces  of  a  more  subtile,  spiritual  order,  and  find  more 
adequate  ways  of  expressing  them.  They  do  not  care 
to  see  the  cruel  strokes  of  war  cut  through  and  thrust 
aside  the  delicate  web  of  social  ties.  This  is  seen  in 
fiction  and  poetry  that  are  discarding  the  coarse  passions 
of  the  battle-field.  War,  like  military  dress  and  mili- 
tary parade,  is  losing  its  appeal  to  our  sensuous  nature. 

These  better  sentiments,  which  carry  us  beyond  war, 
are  aided  by  its  excessive  burdens  and  the  entire  lack  of 
any  limit.  The  crushing  debts  of  Europe,  the  taxation 
incident  to  these  debts,  the  growing  demand  for  mili- 
tary service,  which  most  hate,  the  constant  annoyance 
of  a  dreadful  possibility,  unite  to  destroy  the  fascination 
of  war.  Endless  invention  is  forever  undoing  its  own 
advantages.  It  is  equally  impossible  to  go  forward  and 
to  stand  still.  The  nations  are  in  a  treadmill  which 
imposes  upon  them  most  fatiguing  and  unremunerative 
labor.  The  position  is  becoming  as  absurd  as  it  is  un- 
bearable. If  Europe  could  secure  an  assured  peace  for 
ten  years,  the  blessings  of  life  would  be  immensely  mul- 
tiplied. The  endlessness  of  the  labor  and  the  futility  of 
the  outcome  cannot  fail  to  make  themselves  felt. 

The  increasing  destructiveness  of  war  and  its  rapid- 
ity of  movement  give  rise  t<>  a  sense  of  helplessness  and 


478  civics. 

terror  which  is  wholly  diverse  from  the  earlier  fascina- 
tion of  personal  power.  Courage,  endurance,  strenuous 
effort,  may  avail  nothing.  Men  are  unable  to  measure 
the  forces  let  loose  upon  them,  and  become  frightened 
children  in  their  presence.  To  confront  them  quietly 
demands  a  stolidity  more  and  more  foreign  to  our  civil- 
ization. A  nation  is  unwilling  to  risk  a  sudden,  fearful, 
and  remediless  defeat.  The  accumulated  dangers  of 
war,  pressing  heavily  on  the  rank  and  file,  at  the  same 
time  leave  them  less  and  less  of  personal  prowess  and 
responsibility.  The  mind  is  not  braced  against  danger 
by  its  own  exertion.  Guidance  is  with  the  few ;  the 
many  endure  an  extreme  pressure  which  they  cannot 
modify,  and  often  fail  to  understand.  War  appeals  less 
and  less  to  the  brute  passions  and  powers  of  men.  Its 
slaughter  is  remote,  mechanical,  repulsive.  Men  are 
expected  to  show  courage  with  less  activity  to  call  it 
out ;  insensibility,  with  no  vantage  ground  of  excite- 
ment. Progress  in  the  immunities  and  humanities  of 
life  renders  us  constantly  less  inclined  to  the  irrational 
and  cruel  waste  of  war. 

War  has  been  the  school  of  certain  virtues  —  courage, 
obedience,  self-sacrifice ;  but  these  virtues  are  now  fairly 
implanted  in  human  character,  find  better  forms  of  ex- 
pression, and  assume  in  war  an  extreme  and  frightful 
expression.  All  the  better  impulses,  ripened  in  our 
social  development,  are  uniting  to  exclude  these  inter- 
national conflicts,  and  to  extend  the  permanent,  peace- 
ful growth  of  the  race  over  these  waste  spaces  of  war. 
Sound  international  law  is  the  highest  achievement  of 
our  spiritual  nature,  the  rounding  out  of  our  social  life 
into  a  perfect  sphere. 


PART    IV. 

ETHICS  AS  A  FACTOR  IN  SOCIOLOGY. 


PART    IV. 

ETHICS    AS   A   FACTOR    IN   SOCIOLOGY. 


CHAPTER   I. 
NATURE    OF    ETHICAL   LAW. 

§  1.  Ethical  law  is,  in  an  important  sense,  the  sum 
of  all  knowledge ;  all  knowledge  gives  the  conditions  of 
conduct,  and  is  harmonized  in  conduct.  -Ethics  treats 
of  the  laws  of  conduct.  Conduct  is  the  action  of  a 
rational  being  in  the  exercise  of  his  reason.  The  laws 
of  Ethics  are  those  principles  of  action  which  a  reason- 
able being  assigns  himself  in  the  use  of  his  powers. 
Ethics  has  a  theoretical  and  a  practical  bearing,  which 
are  inseparable  from  each  other.  The  principles  of 
conduct  admit  of  an  abstract  statement  and  give  rise 
to  deductive  conclusions ;  but  these  wait  to  be  con- 
firmed and  modified  by  experience,  and  owe  their  ulti- 
mate force  to  the  life  which  expounds  and  fulfils  them. 
Ethical  principles  are  like  light,  which  gains  diffusion 
and  color  from  the  atmosphere  in  which  it  moves  and 
the  objects  on  which  it  falls. 

The  ethical  law  is  discerned  and  enforced  by  the 
individual.  So  far  as  a  line  of  conduct  is  imposed  on 
one  by  others,  it  loses  ethical  character.  This  char- 
acter is   imparted   by  the   insight  and  acquiescence  of 

is  I 


482  ETHICS. 

the  mind  which  receives  it.  In  the  measure  in  which 
men  are  a  law  unto  themselves  are  they  ethical  beings. 

Ethics  is  the  central  social  science,  because  it  recon- 
ciles all  interests  and  all  laws,  individual  and  collective, 
in  conduct  suitable  to  them  and  harmonious  within 
itself.  If  personal  interests  and  the  general  welfare 
are  capable  of  reconciliation,  that  reconciliation  must 
be  found  in  those  laws  of  conduct  which  inhere  in 
man's  ethical  nature.  If  these  laws  leave  unoccupied 
territory  and  irreconcilable  factors,  there  is  no  remedy. 
The  harmony  of  social  life  is  not  complete  till  each 
man  sees  and  accepts  the  conditions  of  concord.  In 
this  verdict  of  reason  alone,  can  constraint  and  liberty 
concur.  Reason  alone  is  at  one  with  itself,  and  author- 
ity must  at  length  rest  upon  it.  The  unfolding  of  social 
life  is  simply  an  increased  disclosure  of  reason  to  itself 
in  the  common  consciousness. 

The  ethical  law  is  double  in  its  bearing.  It  contains 
an  intellectual  and  an  emotional  element,  inseparable 
from  each  other.  We  express  the  first  by  the  word, 
right ;  the  second  by  the  word,  ought.  The  act  under 
consideration  is  right,  and  so  obligatory.  It  is  as  'im- 
possible to  discern  an  ethical  relation  in  conduct  with- 
out the  feelings  appropriate  to  it,  as  to  discuss  a  flavor 
independently  of  the  sensations  incident  to  it.  Some 
cherish  the  opinion  —  justifying  it  by  this  emotional 
character  of  the  moral  act  —  that  morality  cannot  be 
taught.  Morals  cannot  be  effectually  taught  on  a  purely 
intellectual  basis.  The  feelings  that  interpret  and  sup- 
port moral  action  are  liable  to  disappear  under  abstract 
discussion,  and  with  them  departs  the  power  of  appre- 
hension.    Moral  training,  like  sesthetical  culture,  must 


FIELDS    OF  MORAL    ACTION.  483 

call  out  in  constant  interaction  the  intellectual  vision 
and  the  emotional  response.  The  excess  of  either  re- 
sults in  miscarriage.  The  ethical  growth  of  society 
is  one  of  convictions  and  sentiments. 

There  are  two  views  of  our  moral  nature.  One  view 
looks  upon  the  moral  law  as  a  primitive  product  of 
moral  perception ;  the  other,  as  an  inductive  law,  the 
fruit  of  the  widening  experience  of  the  race.  In  either 
case,  it  is  the  most  absolute  and  universal  of  laws,  the 
product  of  our  highest  insight,  or  our  most  universal 
experience.  The  two  theories  coalesce  in  the  view  that 
the  law,  as  a  law,  is  given  in  the  insight  of  the  reason, 
but  that  the  facts  which  call  it  forth,  expand  and  cor- 
rect it,  are  those  of  daily  life.  The  law  thus  becomes 
the  summation  of  perceptive  power  and  acquired  knowl- 
edge. Not  to  feel  moral  law  is  not  to  recognize  the 
drift  and  organic  force  of  cosmic  events  ;  is  not  to  see 
the  movements  by  which  a  nebulous  spiritual  world 
passes  into  the  kingdom  of  heaven. 

§  2.  There  are  three  somewhat  distinct  fields  of  moral 
action,  —  our  personal  life,  our  social  life,  and  our  reli- 
gious life.  The  central  field,  in  connection  with  which 
alone  the  other  two  can  be  interpreted,  is  society.  Our 
personal  virtues,  as  courage,  temperance,  chastity,  find 
expression  in  our  relations  to  our  fellow-men.  Keligious 
duties  arc  rendered  to  and  with  our  fellow-men.  "  Inas- 
much as  ye  have  done  it  unto  one  of  the  least  of  these 
my  brethren,  ye  have  done  it  unto  me."  The  love  of 
men  is  the  only  adequate  proof  of  the  love  of  God. 
Evolutionary  ethics  insisting  on  altruism  is,  under  an- 
other terminology,  the  command,  "  Thou  shalt  love  thy 
neighbor  as  thyself."' 


484  ETHICS. 

In  Sociology  we  have  occasion  to  trace  ethical  law  as 
the  one  comprehensive  law  by  which  other  laws  are  built 
together  in  society.  It  becomes  analagous  to  what  we 
term  life  in  the  body,  the  plastic  force  which  builds  the 
body  up  as  one  whole,  its  members  in  mutual  subordina- 
tion and  ministration.  Customs  undergo  constant  recon- 
struction by  virtue  of  increasing  moral  insight.  They 
supply  the  inevitable,  half-instinctive  terms  of  provis- 
ional order,  giving  the  moral  reason  time  for  develop- 
ment. Customs  able  to  maintain  social  life  are  the  soil 
in  which  the  germs  of  reason  are  planted,  are  matured, 
and  to  which  they  return.  These  customs,  perpetually 
corrected,  become  the  "  social  tissue "  in  which  the 
vital  force  abides.  As  the  organs  and  organic  tissue  of 
the  body  are  the  basis  of  all  further  physical  develop- 
ment, so  customs  are  the  permanent  tendencies  in  which 
the  gains  of  the  moral  reason  are  laid  down  and  inhere. 

§  3.  When  we  come  to  Economics,  the  relation  is  some- 
what more  complex.  Here  we  meet  with  distinct  im' 
pulses,  assuming  definite  lines  of  action,  that  play  an 
important  constructive  part  in  society.  These  impulses 
claim  a  certain  field  of  their  own,  and  yet  are  to  be  per- 
vaded by  and  harmonized  with  other  tendencies.  We 
are  thus  compelled  to  understand  economic  laws,  the 
order  to  which  they  give  rise,  and  the  relation  of  that 
order  to  society  as  one  whole.  The  relation  cannot  be 
that  of  an  independent  part.  The  view  which  gives 
complete  authority  to  economic  laws  breaks  up  society, 
and  renders  its  collisions  irremediable.  Society  must 
shape  to  itself,  to  its  higher  and  conjoint  uses,  the  sev- 
eral subordinate  tendencies  which  are  at  work  within  it. 
The   engineer   understands   the  laws  which   govern   his 


ETHICAL   LAW  'AND   ECONOMICS.  Is"' 

engine,  but  under  those  laws  lie  assigns  it  purposes 
wholly  his  own,  and  provides  the  conditions  of  their 
fulfilment.  We  cannot  define  prices  otherwise  than  in 
an  open  market,  a  market  which  embraces  and  reconciles 
all  the  facts.  But  it  remains  for  us.  as  men  and  citi- 
zens, to  determine  how  far,  at  any  one  moment,  prices 
are  the  product  of  an  open  market,  and  how  far  we  shall 
accept  them  as  a  final  expression  of  our  obligations. 
Price  may  suffice  to  define  what  is  our  own,  but  does  not 
suffice  to  determine  what  we  should  do  with  our  own. 
The  line  between  justice  and  benevolence  is  drawn  in 
part  by  economic  forces,  but  good-will  at  once  takes  its 
departure  from  this  limit.  It  breeds  confusion  to  call 
that  benevolence  which  is  simply  justice,  or  to  claim  as 
justice  that  which  is  of  the  nature  of  benevolence.  The 
grounds  of  wise  and  humane  action  are  in  this  way  lost. 
"We  cannot  be  benevolent  till  we  have  first  learned  what 
is  just.  Justice  is  our  starting-point,  but  it  is  only  a 
starting-point,  and  we  must  be  constantly  passing  from 
it  into  good-will.  Economics  gives  us,  in  the  matter  of 
values,  skeleton  relations,  which  we  are  to  clothe  with 
flesh. and  blood,  and  till  with  vital  power.  We  must 
know  our  beginnings  in  order  to  begin,  but  we  must  go 
beyond  them,  or  as  beginnings  they  come  to  nothing. 

We  are  bound  to  aid  others  in  securing  a  footing  under 
economic  laws.  We  accept  the  laws,  but  the  conditions 
of  their  wholesome  operation  still  remains  to  be  pro- 
vided. It  by  no  means  follows  that  these  laws,  because 
they  are  laws,  are  in  full  operation,  or,  being  in  opera- 
tion, are  working  prosperity.  This  is  the  fallacy  of  the 
forgetful.  They  assume  thai  given  transactions,  in  form 
commercial,  have  come  fully  under  commercial  law,  and 


486  ETHICS. 

are  to  be  accepted  in  their  results.  The  engineer  is  not 
so  unwise.  He  knows  that  the  laws  of  mechanics  may 
bring  him  evil,  as  well  as  good,  if  not  watched  over. 
Men  believe  in  the  freedom  of  contract.  The}-  do  not 
stop  to  ask  whether  that  freedom  was  real  or  merely 
formal. 

The  laws  of  Economics  are  not  framed  in  reference 
to  personal  wealth,  but  in  reference  to  collective  wealth. 
Its  laws  are  laws  of  production,  production  as  one  aggre- 
gate. It  inquires  how  men  without  theft,  without  trick- 
ery, without  ignorance,  aiming  at  the  largest  returns, 
will  shape  their  action  toward  each  other.  It  is  honest 
action,  action  in  the  light  of  all  the  facts,  that  it  contem- 
plates. It  takes  no  part  with  the  cheat,  with  any  man 
who  crowds  his  fellow  off  from  an  economic  footing,  or 
who  deals  with  him  when  he  has  fallen  as  if  he  were 
still  on  his  feet.  Looked  at  in  any  other  light,  Econom- 
ics would  be  a  science  of  chicanery.  Herein  is  a  great 
limitation.  Men  assume  all  the  while  that  it  is  no  part 
of  their  duty,  in  a  business  transaction,  to  see  whether 
those  with  whom  they  are  dealing  are  able  to  act  under 
the  laws  of  Economics,  or  whether  those  laws  are,  in 
reference  to  them,  in  suspension ;  whether  the  condi- 
tions of  a  wholesome  economic  transaction  are  simply 
assumed,  or  actually  present.  This  disregard  is  not 
respect  for  natural  law,  but  simply  indifference  to  it. 
It  is  a  mere  subterfuge  to  suppose  economic  laws  in 
action  when  ignorance  or  extreme  poverty  has  sus- 
pended them  in  whole  or  in  part.  He  who  justifies  his 
conduct  on  the  plea  of  an  open  market,  must  show  that 
he  is  in  an  open  market.  Economic  harmonies  turn  not 
on  the  fiction,  but  on  the  fact,  of  such  a  market.     If  a 


ETHICAL    LAW  AND  ECONOMICS.  487 

protracted  sweating  process  has  reduced  the  needle- 
women of  a  great  city  to  absolute  want,  then  those  who 
buy  services  of  them  at  nominal  prices  cannot  plead,  in 
justification,  economic  laws.  Economics  contemplates  a 
free  play  of  productive  forces,  possibilities  which  secure 
this  play,  not  a  dead-lock  under  the  tyranny  of  bad 
social  conditions.  A  machine  must  be  tested  in  motion, 
not  with  the  brake  on. 

"We  thus  see  how  impossible  it  is  for  good  men  to 
separate  economic  laws  from  social  states,  and  plead 
them  as  final  and  self-sufficient  principles.  The  whole- 
some operation  of  economic  laws  must  turn  on  the  social 
conditions  with  which  they  are  involved,  and  these  con- 
ditions are  in  part  determined  by  those  adroit  business 
men  who  are  seeking  their  own  profit  in  connection  with 
them.  It  is  the  preliminary  duty  of  every  good  citizen 
to  see  that  the  economic  principles  of  which  he  proposes 
to  avail  himself  are  in  fair  and  full  operation.  It  is  no 
part  of  his  privilege  to  take  advantage  of  their  absence 
for  his  own  gain.  Such  acts  bear  to  Economics  the  same 
relation  as  do  theft  or  violence.  The  great  civic  duty 
which  one  owes  to  society  of  diffusing  everywhere  in- 
telligent, active  power  is  antecedent  to  and  accompanies 
every  righteous  appeal  to  economic  law. 

This  brings  us  to  a  still  more  comprehensive  obliga- 
tion. We  are  not  simply  to  base  our  own  action  on 
economic  forces,  nor  merely  to  aid  others  in  planting 
themselves  side  by  side  with  us  on  these  same  forces. 
We  are  to  see  and  accept  the  fact,  that  these  laws,  when 
operative,  are  at  work  in  conjunction  with  ethical  and 
spiritual  laws,  and  are  submitting  themselves  to  that  in- 
terlacing organic   force   which  unites   all  in  the   public 


488  ETHICS. 

welfare.  It  is  the  office  of  the  ethical  sense  to  har- 
monize conduct,  to  establish  society  as  a  complex,  fruit- 
ful whole.  In  this  subjection  of  parts  to  each  other, 
economic  action  must  accept  limitations  from  other 
social  relations  as  well  as  bring  limitations  to  them. 
All  traffic  lies  between  men,  and  men  have  other  powers 
and  other  sentiments  than  those  involved  in  values.  No 
rational  act  can  be  allowed  to  escape  the  overruling 
rational  relation.  If  any  one  act  is  regarded  as  final 
within  itself,  another  and  still  another  may  be  so  ac- 
cepted, till  the  unity  of  our  rational  life  disappears. 
Moral  action  is  not  one  portion  of  conduct,  lying  side  by 
side  with  other  portions,  it  is  the  overruling  law  in  all 
action,  the  tone  and  quality  of  manhood.  Even  a  ball 
cannot  be  flung  into  the  air  without  beginning  at  once 
to  combine,  in  its  movement,  diverse  and  far-reaching 
forces.  If  we  take  such  a  fact  as  the  growth  of  popu- 
lation beyond  productive  resources,  we  shall  find  it 
primarily  an  ethical  problem.  Let  ethical  principle 
have  scope,  and  a  rapid  increase  of  population  will  be 
accompanied  by  a  still  greater  increase  of  production. 
Let  moral  quality  wane,  and  the  same,  or  even  less,  pop- 
ulation will  begin  to  be  straitened.  We  cannot  assign 
population  a  numerical  expression,  and  production  a 
numerical  expression,  and  so  affirm  a  want  of  equili- 
brium between  them.  The  world  is  so  bountiful  under 
generous  handling,  and  so  miserly  under  mean  handling, 
that  the  equilibrium  is  one  of  character  and  not  of 
quantity.  It  is  the  ethical  key  that  unlocks  the  store- 
houses of  nature. 

We  are  also  bound  to  see  that  economic  laws  presup- 
pose and  rest  upon  ethical  ones.     Economics  discusses 


ETHICAL   LAW  AND   ECONOMICS.  489 

not  personal,  but  collective,  production  ;  not  the  profiting 
of  the   individual,   but  of  the  community.     Its  under- 
lying impulse  is  self-interest,  not  selfishness.     It  traces 
the  productive  power  of  self-interest  in  the  acceptance 
of  common  laws  and  common  limitations,  in  the  pursuit 
of  common  ends.     It  excludes  selfishness,  the  claiming 
by  one  what   is   not  allowed   to    another.     The   princi- 
ples contemplated  are  applicable  irrespective  of  persons. 
These  principles  receive  form  in  reference  to  the  largest 
general  production.     Economics  inquires  into  no  man's 
individual  wealth,  and  teaches  him  no  methods  of  en- 
larging it  which  are  not  common  to  all.     Self-interest 
is  a  just  impulse,  morally  harmonious  with  the  interest 
of  others,  and  Economics   does   not   allow   it   to  break 
bounds  and  pass  into  selfishness.     The  simple  fact  that 
the  thing  aimed  at  is  the  aggregate  wealth,  and  that 
the  laws  laid  down  are  in  reconciliation  of  the  interests 
involved   in    its   pursuit,   removes  at   once  all    collision 
between    Economics    and    Ethics.     If   Economics   truly 
harmonizes   its   own  laws,  Ethics   can  but   accept  that 
reconciliation.     Competition,  as  an  economic  law,  is  not 
a  resort  to  all  means  of  outstripping  another ;  it  stands 
for  the  best   exercise    of   our   own    productive    powers 
with  the  advantages    thereby    accruing    to    us    and    to 
others.     Much  that   justifies  itself  under  the  name   of 
competition  is    as   foreign    to   economic,   as  to   ethical, 
law.     Competition    leaves  every   man  in   possession   of 
his   best   powers,    and    affirms    that    the    social    adjust- 
ments   which    accompany    this    liberty    are,    all    things 
considered,  the  most  desirable.     This  law  justifies  per- 
sonal injury  no  more  than  standing  in  one's  own  place 
involves  crowding  another  from  his  place. 


490  ETHICS. 

Economics  presupposes  equity.  It  excludes  theft, 
fraud,  deceit,  because  they,  one  and  all,  limit  produc- 
tion. Knowledge  and  virtue,  understanding  the  facts 
and  regarding  the  facts  at  any  moment  present  in  pro- 
duction, are  the  presuppositions  of  Economics.  Any 
want  of  either  is  in  suspension  of  its  laws.  Economics 
rests  on  contract.  Contracts  can  be  successfully  framed 
only  in  connection  with  a  clear  view  by  both  parties 
of  the  facts  involved  in  them,  and  a  virtuous  deter- 
mination to  meet  the  obligations  imposed  by  them. 
Ignorance  and  dishonesty  are  alike  opposed  to  contract. 
Wisdom  and  good-will  are  the  atmosphere  in  which 
contracts  thrive. 

Men  see  that  commerce  excludes  violence  ;  they  do 
not  see  as  clearly  that  it  excludes  all  overreaching,  all 
perversion  and  repression  of  its  own  forces ;  that  men 
must  stand  as  honestly  with  each  other  on  the  facts 
as  in  Ethics  itself.  All  that  furtive  measures  secure 
for  one  man  at  the  expense  of  another  is  secured  at  the 
cost  of  production,  as  certainly  as  when  one  is  robbed. 
All  the  growing  complications,  extensions,  personal  de- 
pendencies, and  harmonies  of  production  must  support 
and  be  supported  by  the  ethical  laws  which  knit  men 
together,  or  they  are  wholly  insecure.  The  massive 
building  no  more  presupposes  the  firmness  of  the  earth 
beneath  it  than  does  the  superstructure  of  commerce 
imply  integrity  in  men. 

Economics  discusses  values  in  exchange,  without  stop- 
ping to  inquire  whether  these  values  owe  their  purchas- 
ing power  to  wholesome  or  unwholesome  ministration 
to  the  desires  of  men.  It  is  not,  therefore,  indifferent 
to  this  relation.     It  passes  it  as  too  remote  from  its 


ETHICAL   LAW  AND   CIVICS.  491 

line  of  inquiry.  It  assumes  that  the  gratification  of 
human  wants  is  a  constant  and  desirable  object,  and 
leaves  the  exceptions  to  be  made  good  in  physical  and 
spiritual  hygiene.  If  Economics  extends  itself  to  con- 
sumption,—  properly  a  department  of  morals  —  it  will 
insist  that  values  in  exchange  and  values  in  use  must 
correspond,  or  exchange  will  increasingly  lose  strength. 
The  underlying  assumption  in  Economics  is  that  they 
do  correspond.  This  coincidence  is  incipient  in  the 
interests  of  men,  and  goes  on  to  be  completed  in  their 
conscious  action.  Desires  are  rooted  in  real  wants; 
these  are  their  starting-points.  If  reason  goes  astray 
in  guidance,  to  that  degree  it  perplexes  and  baffles 
trade.  The  laws  of  production  cannot  widely  and  per- 
manently separate  themselves  from  ethical  laws ;  if  they 
do,  they  will  not  be  grounded  in  thrifty  human  life. 
The  coping  must  correspond  with  the  wall  on  which  it 
rests. 

The  relation  of  Ethics  to  Economics  is  summed  up  in 
the  fact  that  the  highest  law  of  harmony  in  society 
is  ethical  law,  and  that  all  minor  harmonies  must  be 
embraced  in  it.  In  whatever  way  Economics  ministers 
to  the  welfare  of  society,  it  must  do  it  in  submission 
to  the  most  comprehensive  expression  of  that  welfare. 
This  expression  is  what  Ave  mean  by  Ethics. 

§  4.  Ethics  lias  been  limited  more  absolutely  and 
with  less  reason  in  its  application  to  Civics  than  in  its 
relation  to  Economics.  It  is  possible  to  look  on  Eco- 
nomics as  made  up  of  natural  laws  sufficient  unto  them- 
selves ;  it  is  hardly  possible  to  regard  civic  laws  in  this 
light.  The  voluntary  elemenl  is  conspicuous  in  them, 
and  conies  up  constantly  for  judgment.     Yet  the  maxim, 


492  ethics. 

"  My  country,  right  or  wrong,"  has  been  something  more 
than  an  unwise  expression  of  patriotism,  and  has  to 
many  minds  justified  itself  as  a  principle  of  action. 

Lord  Lytton,  when  installed  as  Rector  of  the  Univer- 
sity of  Glasgow,  said  :  "  Public  morals  are  a  branch  of 
prudence  rather  than  of  Ethics.  Justice  alone  of  pri- 
vate morals  finds  place  in  public  morals,  and  this  in  a 
different  form,  as  moderation,  kindly  prudence."  The 
reason  of  this  reluctance  to  extend  moral  law  to  public 
relations  is  found  in  the  superior  weight  of  public 
affairs  as  contrasted  with  private  ones,  in  the  nearness 
of  national  interests  to  each  nation,  and  in  the  feeble- 
ness of  international  sympathies.  Men's  minds  are  not 
broad  enough  for  the  considerations  involved  in  national 
morality.  They  accept  the  interests  nearest  them,  in 
oversight  of  greater  interests  a  little  more  remote. 
The  short-sightedness  which  blinds  us  in  personal  action 
blinds  us  still  more  in  national  action. 

The  absoluteness  of  the  state  in  its  own  field,  and  the 
urgency  of  the  dangers  which  press  upon  it,  serve  also 
to  draw  its  attention  to  what  is  immediately  possible,  in 
neglect  of  ideals.  Statesmanship  is  regarded  as  pre- 
eminently a  practical  art,  an  art  at  short  range.  More- 
over, the  obligations  of  states  take  effect  only  in  the 
consciences  of  rulers,  and  rulers  do  not  entertain  the 
question  of  duty  in  quite  the  same  way  when  dischar- 
ging a  delegated  trust  as  when  dealing  with  personal 
concerns.  The  conscience  of  the  state  acts  more  re- 
motely, more  obscurely,  than  the  individual  conscience. 

Yet  ethical  law  is  entering  more  and  more  as  a  ruling 
idea  in  all  civic  construction.  Men  feel  called  on  to 
justify  its  absence  in  a  general  method  or  in  a  specific 


.ii  STICE.  493 

case,  and  this  justification  is  itself  a  recognition  of  the 
ethical  claims.  Rightfulness  and  Ethics  are  ultimately 
inseparable.  Justice,  which  all  admit  as  a  supreme 
civic  virtue,  renders  itself  increasingly  in  ethical  terms. 
The  safety  and  liberty  of  the  citizen  are  hedged  about 
as  the  stronghold  of  his  moral  personality.  The  equality 
and  sacredness  we'  affirm  at  this  point  rest  on  moral 
grounds. 

When  some  new  national  policy  comes  under  consid- 
eration, it  is,  as  in  the  slavery  controversy,  very  likely 
sooner  or  later  to  involve  an  appeal  to  "  the  higher  law," 
the  ethical  law.  As  ethical  principles  are  themselves 
framed  as  permanently  harmonizing  all  interests,  no 
civic  adjustment  can  be  adequate  and  final  which  does 
not  concur  with  them.  As  a  matter  of  fact,  moreover, 
ethical  laws  are  forcing  their  way  into  public  acts.  The 
relations  of  citizens  to  each  other  are  discussed  under 
these  ideas  ;  constitutions,  like  the  English  Constitution, 
are  surrounded  by  customary  notions,  whose  force  is  due 
to  the  sense  of  safety  and  good  order  they  inspire ; 
international  law  is  the  extension  of  obligation  as  well 
as  of  interest  —  the  two  are  inseparable  —  into  the  rela- 
tions of  states  to  each  other.  Its  force  and  its  sanctions 
are  chiefly  moral.  There  can  be  no  limit  to  this  move- 
ment, no  break  in  it.  The  power  to  begin  is  the  power 
to  end. 

§  5.  Justice,  the  ruling  civic  virtue,  embraces  two 
ideas,  —  a  concession  to  the  individual  of  all  rights  not 
inconsistent  with  the  public  welfare,  a  concession  of  the 
same  rights  to  all  persons  under  the  same  conditions. 
The  notion  of  equality  in  method  is  the  popular  and 
conspicuous  part  of  the   idea.      The  guidance  of  civic 


494  •  KTUJts. 

action  exclusively  by  its  own  overruling  idea,  the  public 
welfare,  is  its  very  substance.  Law  and  the  administra- 
tion of  law  are  just  when  all  interests  are  submitted, 
in  one  temper,  to  the  public  welfare.  This  attitude  is  a 
purely  ethical  one.  The  possibility  of  the  reconciliation 
of  all  interests  in  the  common  interest  is  the  ethical 
postulate. 

Justice  does  not  express  an  unchangeable  relation, 
but  one  ever  adjusting  itself  anew  to  varying  circum- 
stances. The  powers  and  rights  of  the  citizen  alter 
with  the  growth  of  the  community,  and  must  be  meas- 
ured at  their  immediate  value.  This  fact  goes  far  to 
exclude  any  conception  of  natural  rights,  the  same  under 
all  circumstances.  Public,  like  private,  virtue  calls  for 
a  diligent  inquiry  into  the  variable  facts  with  which  it 
is  dealing ;  it  aims  to  secure  an  immediate  equilibrium 
between  the  actual  and  the  ideal. 

Justice  is  so  supreme  in  the  state,  not  because  it,  as  a 
virtue,  has  any  different  claim  from  any  other  virtue, 
but  because  it  is  the  virtue  more  immediately  associated 
with  the  functions  of  the  state.  It  is  the  office  of  the 
state  to  preserve  and  enlarge  the  rights  of  men  in  respect 
to  each  other  and  with  each  other.  To  do  this  is  to  do 
justly.  Hence  justice,  in  public  morals,  expresses  the 
fulfilment  of  function. 

§  6.  The  fundamental  postulates  of  justice  in  the 
state  are  :  Each  citizen  is  a  primitive  unit  of  the  same 
order  with  every  other  unit ;  Each  citizen  is  in  posses- 
sion of  his  own  personal  powers,  to  be  used  and  devel- 
oped under  common  conditions.  The  welfare  of  the 
state  is  the  aggregate  welfare  of  its  citizens,  and  finds 
no  other  expression.     The  personal  liberty  of  each  citi- 


JUSTICE.  495 

zen  is  to  be  reconciled  with  a  corresponding  liberty  in 
every  citizen.  Such  a  reconciliation  is  possible,  and  is 
the  basis  of  ideal  justice.  All  collisions  are  partial,  and 
can  be  overcome  in  the  progress  of  events.  These  pos- 
tulates are  the  basis  alike  of  good  government  and 
sound  morality.  Diversity  of  powers,  of  opportunities, 
and  of  relations,  does  not  militate  with  the  essential 
equality  of  rights.  Justice  does  not  stand  for  absolute 
equality,  but  that  equality  which  the  public  welfare 
allows.  Inequalities  are  constantly  changing  terms ; 
equalities  are  ever-present,  overruling  ideas.  The  no- 
tion of  equality  is  an  exceedingly  variable  one,  but 
never  a  visionary  one.  Like  justice  itself,  it  is  ever 
before  us.  The  equilibrium  of  society  lies  between  the 
two  tendencies  on  either  hand,  diversity  and  identity. 

§  7.  The  relation  of  Ethics  to  Civics  lies  first  and 
chiefly  in  the  development  of  this  notion  of  justice. 
Justice  in  the  state  applies  only  to  the  more  open,  ur- 
gent relations  between  man  and  man.  It  touches  the 
duties  we  are  prepared  to  enforce  by  sanctions.  There 
is  a  much  larger  outside  sphere  that  is  left  to  the  moral 
sense  simply.  There  is  a  critical  discussion  constantly 
going  on  as  to  what  duties  ought  to  be  transferred  from 
the  outer  moral  sphere  to  the  inner  civic  one.  As  the 
relations  of  men  increase  in  volume,  some  of  them  as- 
sume new  importance,  and  are  ready  to  take  the  form 
of  civil  obligations.  To  forbid  this  transfer,  when  it 
becomes  fit,  is  to  check  the  conditions  of  growth.  The 
legal  nucleus  of  imperative  obligations  becomes  too 
weak  to  sustain  the  complex  and  voluntary  relations 
which  gather  about  it,  and  rest  back  upon  it.  If  the 
rude  and  the  negligent  are  not  restrained  in  unreason- 


496  ETEtCS. 

able  trespass,  they,  and  not  the  more  progressive,  set 
the  standard  of  public  order.  Yet  to  impose  unneeded 
or  premature  restraints  is  a  trespass  on  individual  lib- 
erty. The  extension  of  police  law  becomes  a  delicate 
question  of  justice. 

The  relation  of  the  two  spheres,  personal  morality  and 
civil  restraint,  is  subject  to  constant  variation.  Civil 
restraint,  wisely  applied,  at  once  limits  and  enlarges 
personal  liberty.  It  is  a  serviceable  test  of  the  sound- 
ness of  law  that  it  confers  more  liberty  than  it  takes 
away.  Thus  the  prohibition  of  the  sale  of  intoxicating 
drinks  is  a  commercial  restriction,  but  it  confers  on  the 
entire  community  an  immensely  overbalancing  gain  in 
power.  One  may  liken  the  growth  of  civil  law  to  the 
extension  outward  of  some  form  of  centrifugal  life,  as 
that  of  a  lichen.  The  original  centre  becomes  relatively 
dead  ;  the  vital  activity  is  in  the  circumference.  This 
is  constantly  appropriating  new  areas.  The  earlier  in- 
junctions of  law  become,  to  the  mass  of  citizens,  ac- 
cepted customs,  ethical  commonplaces.  It  is  only  to 
some  debased  form  of  manhood  that  the  penalty  for 
theft  remains  a  living  motive.  It  is  along  the  border, 
where  civil  law  is  taking  on  new  forms  —  we  will  say 
in  limitation  of  fraud  — that  the  social  moral  conflict  is 
active.  If  civil  law  cannot  make  men  moral,  it  registers 
authoritative  lines  along  which  they  are  becoming  moral. 
When  a  duty  is  transferred  from  the  outer  sphere  of 
individual  enforcement  to  the  inner  sphere  of  law,  the 
fact  shows  that  the  community,  as  one  whole,  is  passing 
the  line  between  seeing  a  public  duty  and  rendering  it. 

The  extension  of  civil  law  is  coincident  with  the  ex- 
tension of  the  moral  sense ;  and  the  moral  sense,  in  turn, 


BENEVOLENCE.  497 

gains  by  each  wise  prohibition.  The  law  follows  up  and 
makes  general  primary  moral  gains.  There  is  always  a 
percentage  of  recalcitrant  ones,  and  also  a  percentage  of 
persons  who  identify  the  moral  and  the  civil  standard 
of  obligation.  The  general,  the  better,  conscience  of  the 
community  thus  takes  effect  through  law ;  the  ranks  are 
closed  up.  It  becomes  the  office  of  justice,  in  view  of 
the  public  welfare,  to  decide  when  the  community  is  pre- 
pared to  advance,  when  it  will  gain  in  power  by  a  new 
restriction.  This  adjustment  of  the  dividing  line  be- 
tween law  and  liberty  involves  the  most  vital  discus- 
sions of  our  social  life. 

§  8.  Benevolence  simply  is  a  private,  rather  than  a 
public,  virtue.  It  is  constantly  restrained  in  the  state 
by  the  necessity  that  action  should  have  reference  to 
some  ulterior,  and  not  too  obscure,  public  gain.  It  can 
hardly  become  that  spontaneous  impulse  which  bestows 
favors  because  they  are  favors.  The  ruler  is  dealing 
with  the  resources  of  others,  and  bound  down  to  the 
law  of  economy  and  prudence.  Yet  good-will  is  so 
stimulative  a  moral  force,  so  corrective  of  evil,  that 
many  public  functions  cannot  be  well  rendered  without 
it.  While  benevolence  in  the  state  cannot  be  allowed 
to  propose  any  one  of  its  ulterior  ends,  it  may  well 
give  tone  to  their  pursuit.  The  criminal,  the  impover- 
ished, the  ignorant  classes,  are  all  measurably  open  to 
good-will  as  a  redemptive  tonic.  The  action  of  the 
government  toward  them  must  have  something  of  the 
generous  force  of  an  ethical  impulse,  or  it  will  become 
barren.  Men  cannot  act  successfully  on  men  except 
within  the  circle  of  manhood. 

§  9.    Ethical  ideas  take  effect  in  the  state  through  in- 


498  ethics. 

dividual  action  and  the  individual  conscience.  Better 
impulses  take  possession  of  public  servants,  and  are 
expressed  by  them  in  connection  with  public  interests. 
There  are  two  forms  of  this  transfer,  that  which  be- 
longs to  the  citizen,  and  that  which  belongs  to  the  ruler. 
Both  citizen  and  ruler  interpret  and  administer  public 
obligations.  It  is  quite  as  difficult  to  secure  a  recogni- 
tion of  public  duties  on  the  part  of  the  citizen  as  it  is  on 
that  of  the  ruler.  His  failures  issue  also  quite  as  much 
in  limitation  of  the  public  welfare  as  do  those  of,  the 
ruler.      The  two  become  inseparable. 

It  is  the  duty  of  the  citizen  to  cherish  a  liberal  idea 
of  the  state  and  of  the  scope  of  its  functions.  A  mag- 
nifying of  the  state  was  a  distinguishing  virtue  of  the 
Greeks,  and  one  fruitful  of  great  results.  It  is  a  virtue 
associated  with  those  periods  of  development  in  which 
the  state  is  the  bulwark  against  barbarism,  in  which 
decay  follows  rapidly  on  anarchy.  In  our  time  a  pur- 
suit of  liberty  within  the  state  tends  somewhat  to  antag- 
onize us  to  the  state  itself.  We  are  disposed  to  assign 
it  a  narrow  and  mechanical  function.  We  need  to  con- 
ceive the  state  as  the  most  comprehensive  and  perma- 
nent organization  among  men.  It  gives  the  moral, 
social  atmosphere  in  which  all  other  organizations  thrive 
&Y  languish.  The  ultimate  expression  of  all  social  life 
is  the  kingdom  of  heaven.  The  most  intelligible  and 
distinctly  defined  terms  in  this  kingdom  express  them- 
selves as  civil  law,  the  obligations  made  binding  on  all. 
The  state  gathers  up  and  defines  the  primary  terms  of 
order.  All  other  organizations  thrive  under  its  shadow, 
like  flowers  in  a  forest,  tempering  without  extinguishing 
the  light  and  heat. 


DUTY  OF   THE   CITIZEN.  499 

The  citizen  is  also  to  cherish  a  large  idea  of  individ- 
ual life,  as  the  final  expression  of  the  prosperity  of  the 
state,  as  the  fruit  of  the  tree.  The  state,  narrowing  the 
lines  of  action  below,  will  open  them  out  above  in  wider 
activities,  nobler  liberties.  The  state  is  not  the  ulti- 
mate product,  but  the  citizen ;  the  citizen  is  the  test  of 
the  state. 

The  equilibrium  which  it  becomes  the  duty  of  the 
citizen  to  maintain  is  that  between  the  centripetal,  or- 
ganic force  of  the  state,  and  the  centrifugal,  specializing 
power  of  the  individual.  It  is  the  duty  of  the  state  to 
give  the  conditions  of  progress  most  universally  favor- 
able to  the  life  of  its  citizens.  Liberty  wars  against 
liberty,  the  liberty  of  a  king  against  the  liberty  of  his 
subjects,  the  liberty  of  a  class  against  the  liberty  of 
other  classes,  the  liberty  of  a  pursuit,  as  commerce, 
against  the  liberty  of  other  pursuits.  It  becomes  the 
function  of  the  state  to  weigh  one  with  all,  all  with 
one,  and  reconcile  them  in  a  higher  harmony.  The  good 
citizen  will  stand  in  awe  of  those  deep-seated  organic 
forces  which  are  truly  cosmic.  He  will  strive  increas- 
ingly to  understand  them,  and  work  with  them.  He 
will  be  quick  to  check  an  exacting  personal  liberty,  and 
to  restore  those  forms  of  personal  liberty  suffering  from 
its  exactions.  He  will  look  upon  crime,  pauperism,  de- 
gradation, as  having  a  double  origin  in  personal  per- 
versity and  social  negligence.  He  will  try  to  correct 
them  in  both  directions.  He  will  work  with  vital 
forces  till,  by  means  of  them,  he  shall  win  the  king- 
dom of  heaven. 

§  10.  The  socio-ethical  law  will  rest  on  the  ruler  as 
a  man,  and  as  a  ruler.     As  the  obligations  of  the   ruler 


500  ETHICS. 

arise  so  directly  from  the  position  he  occupies,  many  are 
willing  to  regard  them  as  acting  in  suspension  of  per- 
sonal duties.  But  the  moral  law  never  becomes  frag- 
mentary, or  allows  itself  to  be  used  in  a  divisive  fashion. 
The  ruler,  in  framing  law,  is  under  obligation  to  frame 
it  in  view  of  the  public  welfare  comprehensively  con- 
sidered. The  danger  of  a  policy,  such  a  policy  as  that 
of  protection,  is  that  it  shall  move  as  a  perverting  mis- 
directing tendency  among  these  universal  interests.  The 
legislator  thus  loses  his  way  amid  a  mass  of  conflicting 
claims,  and  finally  does  he  knows  not  what.  The  secret 
of  success  in  dealing  with  vital  things  is  quite  as  much 
in  holding  one's  hand  aloof,  as  in  using  it. 

So  also  law  is  to  be  administered  with  distinct  refer- 
ence to  the  public  welfare.  Law  owes  its  beneficence 
as  much  to  the  spirit  in  which  it  is  applied  as  to 
its  own  wisdom.  The  entire  force  of  a  strong  moral 
manhood  is  demanded  to  crowd  into  the  background 
those  manifold  considerations  which  are  constantly  com- 
ing between  the  law  and  its  faithful  execution.  It  is 
this  fact  which  makes  a  man's  personal  morality,  his 
personal  force,  as  significant  as  his  recognition  of  public 
relations.  Something  of  this  atmosphere  of  obligation 
has  been  gathered  about  judicial  action,  but  very  little 
of  it  about  legislative  and  executive  activity.  We  do 
not  order  an  election  as  we  order  a  judicial  process,  and 
we  order,  as  we  have  seen,  a  judicial  process  under  nar- 
row and  technical  terms  that  often  completely  miscarry, 
not  under  a  shifty,  comprehensive  sense  of  obligation. 
AVe  have  more  faith  in  a  mechanical  method  than  in  a 
living  man. 

The  ruler  is  called  on  to  cherish  a  conservative  tern- 


DUTY   OF  THE   RULER.  501 

per.  It  is  his  particular  duty  to  defend  and  develop 
existing  institutions.  He  cannot  abandon  them  readily. 
Revolution  is  intrusted  to  others.  It  is  his  office  to 
watch  over  the  laws  in  their  own  lines  of  growth.  In 
doing  this  the  ruler  must  recognize  the  organic  force  of 
society,  its  ability  to  propose  and  pursue  new  objects. 
The  enlargement  of  its  life  is  the  enlargement  of  law. 
The  ruler  must  apprehend,  therefore,  the  relation  of  ex- 
isting institutions  to  the  possibilities  which  lie  nearest 
to  them.  The  statesman  may  have  the  inferior  power 
of  so  measuring  forces  as  to  know  when  resistance  is 
safe,  and  when  it  is  unsafe,  or  the  superior  power  of 
encouraging  or  repressing  movement  as  it  lies,  or  fails 
to  lie,  in  the  line  of  progress.  His  insight  may  be 
merely  empirical,  or  it  may  be  profound. 

It  may  be  thought  that  what  has  now  been  said  is  a 
purely  ethical  disquisition  and  not  a  social  discussion. 
The  fitness  of  it  rests  on  the  idea  that  the  constructive 
life  in  society  is  essentially  the  moral  reason  ;  that  the 
harmonizing,  germinating  impulse  in  society  is  germane 
to  the  moral  reason  ;  that  the  moral  impulse  guides  civic 
action,  limits  economic  action,  reshapes  customs,  and 
itself  receives  the  full  force  of  those  personal  incentives 
that  are  expressed  in  religion. 


PART    V. 

RELIGION  AS  A  FACTOR  IN  SOCIOLOGY. 


PART    V. 
RELIGION   AS   A   FACTOR   IN   SOCIOLOGY. 


CHAPTER   I. 
GROWTH    OF    RELIGION. 

§  1.  Religion"  may  be  defined  broadly  as  a  belief  in 
a  spiritual  world.  Any  recognition  of  supersensuous 
terms  in  our  lives  is  of  the  nature  of  religion.  Religion, 
in  its  development,  simply  expands,  corrects,  and  sys- 
tematizes these  beliefs.1  The  religious  force  in  society 
has  moved  through  a  very  wide  scale.  Human  action 
is  constantly  altered  in  its  lower  as  well  as  in  its  higher 
forms  by  dealing  with  impalpable  spiritual  forces.  The 
shifting  forms  of  these  beliefs,  with  the  phases  of  action 
which  have  followed  from  them,  constitute  an  important 
part  of  history. 

The  simplest  expression  of  supersensuous  influences 
is  fetishism,  the  ascription  to  physical  objects  of  forces 
in  no  way  based  on  experience.  Man  interprets  the 
world  by  bis  own  confused  consciousness.  As  he  pos- 
sesses qualities  not  sensuously  discoverable,  it  is  easy 
for   him   to  ascribe  like    powers  to  other  objects.      So 

1  "Genesis  and  Growth  of  Religion,"  S.  H.  Kellogg,  lecture  i. ; 
"Natural  Religion,"  Mux  Miiller,  lecture  ii. 

&05 


506  RELIGION. 

strong  is  this  personifying  tendency  that  science,  even, 
when  it  firmly  sets  itself  against  it,  is  constantly  speak- 
ing of  nature,  and  natural  law,  and  natural  selection, 
as  if  they  were  distinct  entities  at  work  in  a  way 
of  their  own  in  the  world.  Indeed,  the  sentence  just 
closed  offers  a  familiar  example.  Science  is  spoken  of 
as  doing  this  and  that,  when  science  is  nothing  more 
than  an  abstraction.  Nor  can  it  be  said  that  this  is 
mere  language ;  it  is  both  thought  and  language. 

Thought,  gaining  more  coherence,  begins  to  separate 
the  physical  from  the  spiritual  world,  and  conceives  the 
latter  as  occupied  by  good  and  bad  spirits,  not  directly 
associated  with  any  form  of  matter.  This  is  the  stage 
of  polytheism.  The  world  seems  full  of  conflicting  ten- 
dencies, and  the  conflict  is  thought  to  have  a  double 
form.  It  offers  itself  in  physical  things  and  in  spiritual 
beings. 

As  men  come  to  apprehend  the  world  more  perfectly, 
the  unity  of  it  is  more  apparent.  This  unity  is  re- 
ferred to  the  creative  power  of  a  single  Supreme  Being. 
The  minor .  conflicts  which  remain  unexplained  are  as- 
cribed to  a  want  of  pliability  in  material  things,  to  the 
unconcessive  temper  of  men,  to  subordinate  evil  spirits, 
to  the  justice  of  God  not  wholly  reconcilable  with  his 
love.  The  Supreme  Being,  so  conceived,  is  separable 
from  the  world  —  outside  of  it. 

Still  further  knowledge  discloses  the  coherence  of  the 
world  within  itself.  The  wisdom  of  the  world,  the 
goodness  of  the  world,  are  seen  to  be  involved  in 
the  world  itself,  to  be  indistinguishable  from  its  origi- 
nal structure.  We  have  no  dead  matter  built  into  a 
world  ;  we  have  only  the  world  itself,  an  ever-renewed 


GROWTH   OF  THE  IDEA    OF  GOD.  507 

expression  of  living,  constructive  forces.  The  wisdom 
of  the  world  abides  in  the  world,  as  thought  abides  in 
language.  The  moral  discipline  of  the  world  is  part 
and  parcel  of  its  history,  as  deeply  associated  with  its 
sufferings  as  with  its  blessings.  Eational  evolution  in 
man  stands  correlated  with  physical  evolution  in  the 
world,  and  suffers  no  abatement  or  loss  by  it.  The  love 
which  is  locked  up  in  evolution,  whose  expression  is  an 
ever-enlarging  spiritual  life,  is  complete.  The  love  of 
God  abides  in  all  the  terms  of  life,  because  they  are 
terms  of  life.  God  and  God's  wisdom  and  love  are 
immanent  in  the  world.  The  world  is  the  ever-renewed 
product  of  his  life.  Spiritual  evolution  becomes  the 
ruling,  explanatory  idea.  Darkness  is  endurable  because 
it  is  ever  breaking  away  before  the  growing  light. 

At  this  point  the  interpreting  conception  divides.  "We 
may  make  matter  in  its  methods,  or  mind  in  its  meth- 
ods, the  ruling  notion.  If  we  make  the  material  move- 
ment the  significant  framework  of  things,  the  rational 
movement  becomes  a  by-play,  less  and  less  important, 
till  it  disappears  as  a  controlling  idea.  We  reach  Pan- 
theism. The  gist  oi  Pantheism  is  that  physical  causes 
enclose  all  things.  God  as  a  personal  being  is  but  a 
personification,  a  gratuitous  power  we  put  back  of  a 
material  movement  forever  enclosed  within  itself.  Mon- 
ism, united  to  empiricism,  lead  to  this  issue.  Matter 
becomes  a  monogram  whose  form  and  law  are  ultimate. 

We  may.  true  to  the  tendency  which  has  led  us  to  this 
point  of  division,  true  to  the  tendency  which  puts  force 
back  of  material  phenomena,  life  back  of  living  things, 
spirit  back  of  thought,  thought  back  of  expression, 
regard  the  world  as  the  product  of  a  rational,  personal 


508  RELIGION. 

life,  which  sustains  it  and  transcends  it,  as  every  crea- 
tive idea  runs  with  and  in  advance  of  its  own  products. 
This  is  Theism,  an  interpretation  of  the  world  on  the 
side  of  mind,  the  faithfulness  of  reason  to  itself  as  the 
only  ultimate  light  of  all  things.  This  view  is  monistic 
only  in  that  it  leaves  mind  back  of  all  things.  It  recog- 
nizes being,  expression,  as  necessarily  dualistic. 

§  2.  Whichever  of  these  opinions  and  shades  of  opin- 
ion we  may  take,  the  relation  of  the  visible  to  the  invis- 
ible remains  a  most  fruitful  term  in  social  development. 
This  very  evolution  of  spiritual  ideas  has  been  a  primary 
and  most  productive  form  of  intellectual  activity,  and, 
from  the  beginning,  a  ruling  force  in  social  relations. 
There  has  been  no  more  simple  and  certain  test  of 
national  character  than  that  of  religious  conceptions. 

In  the  wide  sense  we  have  given  the  word,  religion 
has  been  an  inevitable  and  universal  impulse  among 
men.  In  the  presence  of  so  large  a  fact,  it  matters  very 
little  whether,  in  every  obscure  form  of  human  life,  we 
can  or  cannot  trace  its  germs.  The  errors,  superstitions, 
vices,  which  have  attended  on,  and  attached  themselves 
to,  this  evolution,  disclose  the  bad  conditions  under 
which  it  has  taken  place,  not  any  falseness  or  futility 
in  the  movement  itself.     This  has  been  cosmic. 

There  is  a  way  of  looking  at  these  complex  results  by 
which  we  ascribe  half  the  evils  of  society  to  religion, 
since  the  two  have  been  bound  together  in  the  swathing 
bands  of  the  childhood  of  the  race.  In  the  same  fashion 
we  could  ascribe  all  tyranny  to  government,  all  error  to 
knowledge,  all  vice  to  virtue.  In  every  case  the  inner 
life  relieves  itself  but  slowly  from  the  integuments  which 
enclose  it,  and  this  with  violence  and  decay.     The  criti- 


CONCEPTION   OF  GOD.  509 

cism  and  agnosticism  of  the  world  have  themselves  been 
the  product  of  the  primary  movement  of  belief,  and  have, 
in  rapid  sequence,  given  occasion  to  some  better,  purer 
form  of  faith. 

§  3.  The  later  developments  of  religion  lie  in  the 
direction  of  more  just,  ennobling  conceptions  of  God, 
and  of  our  relations  to  him.  These  are  the  product  of 
our  most  comprehensive  grasp  of  the  universe,  physical 
and  spiritual.  Whatever  we  find  involved  in  the  high- 
est forms  of  wisdom  and  power,  that  we  transfer  to  the 
Divine  Being.  A  travelling  toward  God  is  a  travelling 
outward  into  the  physical  and  the  social  world,  and 
upward  into  the  intellectual  and  the  spiritual  world. 

Two  terms,  personal  power  and  physical  power,  super- 
naturalism  and  naturalism,  struggle  for  reconciliation. 
Ethical  impulse  and  physical  law,  a  world  of  mind  and 
a  world  of  matter,  wait  to  be  united  in  our  conception 
of  the  being  and  government  of  God.  This  is  the  high- 
est moveable  equilibrium  in  our  lives.  If  we  give  chief 
weight  to  personal  quality,  the  world  becomes  for  us 
fitful,  supernatural.  This  is  the  earlier  tendency  of 
faith.  If  Ave  give  our  first  attention  to  the  magnificent 
march  of  events  in  the  midst  of  which  we  are,  then  the 
government  of  God  sinks  into  an  impersonal  fatality. 
This  is  the  later  tendency  of  physical  inquiry.  If  either 
one  prevails  to  the  exclusion  of  the  other,  we  lose  the 
real  power  of  the  world  about  us.  We  sink  into  noth- 
ingness alike  in  the  presence  of  unlimited  supernatural- 
ism  and  unlimited  naturalism. 

The  two  tendencies",  personal  and  physical,  coalesce 
in  Supreme  Reason  ;  personal,  flexible  wit  bin  itself, 
because  it  is  reason;  impersonal  and  permanent,  because 


510  RELIGION. 

it  is  ever  passing  into  action.  This  double  life  we  also 
share.  Our  thought  must  be  free,  our  act  must  be  fixed, 
or  each  loses  its  own  character  and  its  relation  to  the 
other.  Wisdom  and  power  are  united ;  wisdom  that  is 
a  law  to  itself,  power  that  fulfils  all  that  is  committed 
to  it.  The  world  reveals  the  personality  of  God  —  it 
does  not  contain  or  measure  it.  Creation  is  creation 
only  because  the  Creator  transcends  it.  Things  main- 
tain this  rational  character  only  by  dualistic  relation. 
Consistent  monism  would  be  as  ruinous  to  thought  as 
would  be  the  arrest  of  motion  to  the  material  world. 

It  is  the  ethical  idea  primarily  that  helps  us  upward 
toward  God.  If  God  is  love,  then  he  has  the  liberty 
and  the  largeness  of  love,  and  all  events  will  become 
more  and  more  the  expression  of  that  love.  Evolution 
does  not  bear  down  the  divine  love,  but  it  bears  it  on. 
Eeason,  the  centre  of  personality,  pushes  forward  under 
its  own  constructive  impulses  toward  a  universal,  puri- 
fied, spiritual  life.  Things  remain  fixed,  yet  in  continu- 
ous floAV,  that  they  may  minister  to  persons,  self-impelled 
and  divinely  impelled  toward  the  growing  light  of  a 
divine  life. 

§  4.  The  great  difficulty  which  this  view  of  God  en- 
counters, and  which  holds  it  back  so  long  from  accept- 
ance, is  that  the  world  does  not  minister  as  uniformly 
and  universally  to  happiness  as  we  think  it  ought.  But 
this  obstacle  also  finds  explanation  under  the  evolution- 
ary idea.  That  which  is  being  evolved  is  spii  itual  life, 
strong  within  itself,  instructed  in  righteousness,  and 
watchful  in  the  entire  field  of  physical,  personal,  social 
phenomena.  This  evolution,  turning  on  the  tardy  pro- 
cesses of  consciousness,  and  the  still  more  tardy  events 


EVOLUTION   IX    SPIRITUAL   LIFE.  511 

cf  the  social  world,  must  be  painfully  slow.  All  events 
do  minister  to  knowledge,  and,  through  knowledge,  to 
virtue.  Virtue  climbs  into  authority,  though  with  much 
confusion  of  thought  and  many  backslidings.  If  every 
step  is  to  be  taken  toward  the  light,  and  be  taken  by 
all,  then  the  time  requisite  and  the  needful  variety  of 
events  must  be  accepted.  He  who  finds  fault  must  show 
a  more  speedy  method  to  the  same  result.  The  recon- 
ciling idea  is  spiritual  evolution.  All  things  work  to- 
gether for  good  for  the  children  of  God.  Manhood,  as 
a  commanding  achievement,  is  indigenous  to  the  world. 
Abundant  proof  can  be  brought  to  this  statement  as  an 
empirical  fact.  Those  whose  lives  have  been  immersed 
most  deeply  in  the  spiritual  events  of  the  world  are 
most  convinced  of  its  truth.  If  happiness  is  deferred 
to  character,  character  commands  happiness.  We  save 
our  lives  by  losing  them. 

§  5.  This  spiritual  growth  is  a  true  evolution.  It  is 
at  one  with  an  evolutionary  world.  It  is  also  the  most 
comprehensive  form  of  evolution.  Every  lower  form, 
physical,  biological,  gives  it  its  terms.  The  successive 
phases  of  spiritual  life  are  distinct  advances  on  the  past, 
and  are  a  preparation  for  all  that  lies  beyond  them. 
Evils,  transgressions,  sufferings,  are  no  objections  ;  they 
are  simply  the  unformed  material  with  which,  and 
through  which,  the  work  goes  on.  These  losses  are  no 
more  disturbing  than  delays  in  physical  construction, 
than  the  waste  of  life  rising  into  life.  They  are  more 
unbearable  only  because  they  lie  along  the  path  of  a  su- 
perior progress.  They  get  their  darkness  from  the  light 
with  which  they  are  associated.  The  entire  movement  is 
more  strenuous,  because  we  are  passing  into  a  region  of 


512  RELIGION. 

grander  relations.  We  are  not  to  disparage  this  crea- 
tion because  it  is  a  costly  product,  because  that  which 
is  high  and  wide  discloses  the  depths  on  which  its  foun- 
dations rest.  If  our  minds  are  deeply  occupied  with 
building  a  spiritual  universe,  one  purifying  every  man, 
embracing  every  man,  the  time  will  not  seem  unduly 
long,  nor  the  methods  unduly  stringent,  nor  the  labor 
unduly  severe.  We  shall  learn  to  enjoy  the  good  of 
each  transition  state.  We  shall  not  be  as  the  impatient 
amateur,  who  demands  the  immediate  completion  of  his 
pleasure-grounds,  but  as  the  wise  horticulturist,  to  whom 
the  process  is  as  interesting  as  is  the  conclusion. 

An  ethical  intelligence,  disclosing  broadly  and  deeply 
the  forms  and  issues  of  conduct,  will,  in  this  spiritual 
evolution,  be  the  ruling  idea.  It  is  not  happiness  as  a 
fact,  —  least  of  all  a  passive,  sensuous  happiness,  —  but 
happiness  as  the  fruitage  of  power,  the  product  of  in- 
sight, that  is  the  fulness  of  life  ;  and  to  this  happiness 
spiritual  intelligence  is  the  intervening  term.  'First 
well  regulated  power,  then  the  felicity  of  power.  At- 
tention is  transferred  from  a  product  to  an  achievement, 
from  an  accomplishment  to  a  movement.  The  winning 
of  power  and  of  pleasure  become  inseparable.  The  spirit 
is  drawn  into,  and  keeps  pace  with,  the  activity  that  de- 
lights it.  There  is  no  room  for  weariness  or  satiety. 
Physical,  intellectual,  social  laws  lie  beneath  man  as 
things  knowable  and  manageable  ;  they  lie  between  man 
and  God  as  revelation,  incentive,  reward.  Spiritual 
development  goes  forward  first  as  form,  then  as  color; 
first  as  knowledge,  then  as  pleasure. 

The  solution  of  life  comes  to  us  theoretically  and 
practically  as  one  indivisible  product.     Knowledge  be- 


EVOLUTION  IN    SPIRITUAL   LIFE.  513 

comes  empirical  in  the  strictest  meaning  of  the  word. 
The  path  we  travel  is  disclosed  to  us  as  we  pursue  it. 
The  pleasure  won  gains  constantly  by  the  winning.  The 
satisfaction  of  the  mind  is  within  itself,  and  can  be 
successfully  opposed  to  all  the  inadequacy  of  the  world 
elsewhere.  Righteousness  becomes  a  living  experience, 
which  does  not  look  beyond  itself  for  justification.  The 
intuitive  and  empirical  elements  involved  in  it  mutually 
satisfy  each  other. 

The  chief  field  for  this  development  is  society  —  spir- 
itual life  built  up  between  man  and  man,  as  language,  as 
civilization,  as  art,  are  built  up.  The  evil  and  the  good 
are  disclosed  in  conduct.  Here  their  innumerable  fibres 
find  suitable  soil,  and  their  affluent  branches  room.  It 
is  men  who  call  out  and  reward  the  affections ;  and  be- 
tween the  pure  alone  can  these  affections  be  pure.  Each 
personal  gain  becomes  a  social  gain,  each  social  gain  a 
personal  one.  Men  are  capable  of  communal  salvation 
only.  The  outward  world  which  gives  gracious  recep- 
tion to  spiritual  activity,  and  turns  it  back  on  itself  with 
a  blessing,  is  the  social  world.  All  must  be  redeemed 
as  the  condition  of  the  complete  redemption  of  any. 
Whatever  delays  and  limits  the  growth  of  society,  de- 
lays and  limits  the  growth  of  each  man  in  society. 

The  ultimate  authority  in  this  evolution  is  the  evolu- 
tion itself,  the  rational  impulse  which  flows  from  it  and 
flows  through  it.  The  Divine  Reason  is  disclosed  in 
this  movement,  and  human  reason,  catching  this  light, 
becomes  full  of  light.  As  all  things  come  more  and 
more  to  express  the  mind  of  God,  men  come  to  share 
this  mind.  Events  resolve  themselves  into  the  king- 
dom of  heaven,  and  men  cease  to  feel  the  need  of 
searching  for  anything  more. 


514  RELIGION. 

§  6.  Religion  is  a  primitive,  potent  organic  force  in 
society.  No  customs  are  more  pervasive  or  binding 
than  religious  customs.  The  religious  sentiment  has 
more  often  than  the  civic  sentiment  been  the  ruling 
force  in  shaping  nations.  A  formal  separation  of  the 
two  has  but  just  commenced.  Religion,  like  race  and 
language,  has  followed  in  the  very  stream  of  life.  The 
followers  of  Islam,  Russia  and  the  Greek  Church,  Latins 
and  the  Latin  Church,  Protestant  nations  and  Protest- 
antism, all  express  ruling  differences  in  national  devel- 
opment. Any  deep  social  temper,  as  thrift  in  Scotland, 
liberty  in  New  England,  is  sure  to  be  associated  with 
some  striking  phase  of  religious  life.  The  religious 
impulse  also  sends  forth,  from  time  to  time,  some 
special  impulse,  like  Methodism,  Tractarianism,  Mor- 
monism,  working  extended  changes.  Civic  institutions, 
when  they  have  separated  themselves  from  the  religious 
temper  of  the  people,  have  been  little  more  than  a 
grinding,  levelling  physical  force.  Religion,  when  it 
has  not  been  a  supreme  helper  in  building  up  the  state, 
has  not  been  an  inert,  indifferent  element.  Prance,  in 
its  expulsion  of  the  Huguenots,  and  in  its  present  hos- 
tility to  Catholic  faith,  is  a  witness  to  the  social  force 
of  the  religious  life. 

Religion  offers  itself  under  a  great  variety  of  forms, 
all  of  them  inadequate  in  different  degrees,  but  all  of 
them  closely  associated  with  some  phase  of  social  de- 
velopment. The  apprehension  of  spiritual  things,  start- 
ing in  a  most  rudimentary  way,  has  been  obscure, 
extravagant,  and  inadequate.  Religion  is  no  more  ideal 
than  knowledge,  art,  civilization.  The  latest,  as  well 
as   the    earliest  and   most   perplexed,    development   of 


EVOLUTION  IN  RELIGION.  515 

thought,  it  is  necessarily  subjected  to  the  largest  vari- 
ety of  error.  Experience  can  advance  but  slowly  in 
this  obscure  region.  Gross  mistakes  attend  on  devel- 
opment, yet  mistakes  that  are  not  wholly  erroneous. 
There  are  a  large  exclusion  of  the  least  fit,  a  slow  inclu- 
sion of  the  most  fit.  The  less  spiritual  conception  is 
driven  out  by  the  more  spiritual.  Conviction,  persua- 
sion, gain  ground  on  compulsion.  Inherent  ethical  law 
replaces  positive  command.  Naturalism  subdues  super- 
naturalism  to  its  own  temper.  The  sense  of  develop- 
ment takes  the  place  of  that  of  completeness. 

The  steps  are  partial,  all  inevitable,  all  in  a  measure 
good.  The  corrective  force  of  growth  is  an  essential 
part  of  growth.  The  egregious  faults  of  religion  come 
to  be  faults  chiefly  by  being  disclosed  in  the  clear  light 
we  have  attained  through  them.  It  is  the  backward 
view,  not  the  forward  view,  that  repels  us.  The  great 
embarrassment  in  this  divine  unfolding  has  been  the 
effort  in  men's  minds  to  make  each  position  final.  Re- 
ligious truth  greatly  suffers  from  the  force  with  which 
men  assert  it.  The  determination  to  take  a  given  step 
is  the  determination  that  it  shall  be  the  last. 

There  is  a  constant  change  in  the  relation  of  religion 
to  society.  It  starts  in  authority.  It  rules  by  fear 
and  by  reward.  Superstition  carries  with  it  severe 
restraints.  The  medicine-man  is  not  easily  resisted. 
The  theism  of  Israel  rested  on  the  acceptance  of  God 
as  a  ruler,  punishments  and  blessings  turning  on  obe- 
dience. When  the  sense  of  good-will  displaces  that  of 
authority,  it  often  remains  a  beneficence  that  makes 
terms  with  its  subjects,  and  turns  into  anger  if  the 
conditions    are    not   complied    with.     The    impulses   of 


516  RELIGION. 

conduct  are  not  purely  moral ;  they  are  governmental 
and  moral.  The  old  remains,  and  mingles  with  the 
new. 

Only  slowly  do  we  come  into  possession  of  the  inner 
completeness,  adequacy,  coherence  of  the  spiritual  world 
—  obedience  and  disobedience,  pleasure  and  pain,  reward 
and  punishment,  working  together  to  instruct  the  spirit 
and  carry  it  forward  into  life.  The  mind  of  God,  push- 
ing in  all  things  everywhere  toward  his  creative  pur- 
pose, is  the  solution  to  which  we  move  but  tardily.  We 
can  conceive  his  action  more  easily  in  narrower  ways. 

Reason  ceases  more  and  more  to  be  a  law  laid  upon 
men,  and  becomes  a  law  springing  up  within  them. 
The  world  less  and  less  needs  the  correction  of  super- 
naturalism,  more  and  more  feels  and  rejoices  in  those 
orderly  impulses  which  lie  compacted  together  in  natu- 
ralism. 

The  intolerance  which  goes  with  authority,  which 
men  have  felt  toward  the  foreigners,  the  trades  from 
abroad,  the  unbelievers  and  the  misbelievers,  passes 
into  the  tolerance  of  growth,  a  free  traffic  of  ideas  by 
which  men  grow  rich  in  knowledge.  When  men  accept 
the  wisdom  of  God  as  a  revelation,  an  evolution,  they 
thrive  with  each  other  and  borrow  from  each  other. 
Life  ministers  to  life,  not  as  stationary,  but  as  con- 
stantly passing  into  something  higher  than  itself. 

There  is  a  tendency  in  every  form  of  faith  to  de- 
generate, a  tendency  that  is  escaped  only  by  evolution. 
Earlier  ideas  exhaust  their  power  and  are  not  replaced 
by  new  ideas.  A  doctrine  vigorously  put,  like  the 
dogma  of  faith  by  Luther,  corrects  certain  faults, 
brings  in  certain  needed  compensations,  then,  in  turn, 


EVOLUTION   IN   RELIGION.  oil 

discloses  its  own  partial  character,  and  calls  for  a 
second  upheaval.  The  first  one  or  two  centuries  ex- 
haust the  conquering  life  of  almost  any  creed.  It 
then  becomes  an  indurated  bond,  that  must  in  turn  be 
broken.  God  renews  his  seeds  in  nature  every  year. 
There  is  not  a  church  of  any  considerable  age  that 
does  not  show  the  lapse  of  life.  The  growth  of  faith 
is  by  new  points  taken  beyond  the  prescribed  limits. 

Rites,  expressive  in  themselves  and  capable  of  giv- 
ing direction  and  discipline  to  the  lives  they  em- 
brace, settle  down  into  ecclesiasticism,  into  self-sufficing 
method,  and  so  lose  in  large  part  their  ministration. 
The  spiritual  life,  like  other  forms  of  life,  exhausts  its 
soil,  wears  out  its  type,  and  renews  itself  only  as  it 
takes  part  in  the  march  of  life. 

To  meet  this  decadence,  there  is  also  in  faith  an  ever- 
renewed  reformatory  power.  '  Fresh  minds  are  touched 
in  a  fresh  way  by  truth  ;  out  of  the  contact  conies  new 
dogma.  Collision  follows,  measured  in  violence  by  the 
energy  of  the  new  and  the  inertia  of  the  old.  The  strife 
is  no  greater  than  the  conditions  call  for,  and  the  power 
generated  expresses  itself  in  the  next  phase  of  progress. 
Those  drenched  by  the  pouring  rains  do  not  see  how 
fast  the  clouds  are  driving  by ;  men  worried  and  per- 
plexed by  the  passion  of  debate  do  not  feel  that  the 
contention  will  pass  by.  like  thousands  of  others,  and 
leave  the  atmosphere  deeper  and  clearer  than  before. 
The  human  mind  is  like  a  malarious  soil  that  cannot  be 
broken  up  for  new  crops  without  encountering  the  decay 
of  old  ones.  Men  are  so  fearful  of  the  new,  because 
it  seems  ready  to  exclude  the  old.  They  become  hos- 
pitable   of    progress   when   they   discover   that  it    fulfils 


518  RELIGION. 

the  old  in  the  new,  and  carries  the  two  forward  in  a 
higher  service.  Life  becomes  increasingly  conscious 
of  itself,  less  instinctively  afraid  for  itself,  and  gains 
a  comforting  sense  of  its  own  power. 

§  7.  Besides  the  direct  development  of  religion  with 
society,  by  which  the  two,  with  mutual  illumination, 
pass  into  superior  forms,  religion  acts  on  the  other 
organic  forces  at  work  among  men.  Customs,  the  in- 
stinctive emotional  ties  which  lie  just  below  reason 
and  are  built  upon  by  it,  receive  much  of  their  binding 
force  from  religion,  and  are  reshaped,  though  very 
slowly,  by  it.  There  are  no  customs  more  tenacious 
than  religious  customs.  This  tenacity  is  due  to  the 
strong,  yet  obscure,  feelings  which  give  rise  to  them 
and  to  the  extent  to  which  they  rest  on  social  contact. 
Men  hold  their  religious  feelings  more  than  other  feel- 
ing in  common.  The  beliefs  out  of  which  they  spring 
are  communal  possessions.  Even  the  taciturnity  of  the 
religious  life  makes  for  its  uniformity.  Men  receive 
direction  in  common,  and  think,  so  far  as  they  think  at 
all,  along  the  familiar  ways.  Religion,  in  connection 
with  customs,  greatly  increases  the  coherence  of  society. 
Thus  the  democratic  temper,  which  is  native  to  Chris- 
tianity, has  been  powerful  in  the  entire  history  of 
Catholicism,  and  that,  too,  in  spite  of  its  own  hier- 
archical form. 

Economics  turns  on  the  exchange  of  services  between 
man  and  man.  Religion  does  much  to  modify  and 
soften  this  intercourse.  Men  cannot  labor  with  each 
other  and  for  each  other,  they  cannot  combine  and 
divide  and  interchange  their  services,  as  simply  intel- 
lectual   automata.       Self-interest    cannot     remain    the 


RELIGION  AND   CIVICS.  519 

coiled  spring  at  the  centre  of  life,  exclusively  impel- 
ling actions  and  relations  so  complicated  as  those  of 
commerce.  The  motives  of  religion  are  incommensura- 
ble with  those  of  the  market,  and  they  cannot  but 
modify  them.  The  religious  impulse  accepts  far  too 
readily  the  economic  relation,  but  it  does  something 
to  relieve  it.  The  vine  climbs  over  iron  bars,  and 
covers  them  with  its  leaves. 

A  similar  service  of  faith  is  more  marked  in  Civics. 
It  is  the  office  of  the  state  to  cast  up  around  the  na- 
tional life  barriers  of  defence,  and  to  establish  within 
it  the  most  essential  terms  of  good  order.  Religion 
strengthens  national  sentiment,  and  softens  domestic 
asperities.  It  is  present  in  the  new  relations  that 
society  is  constantly  taking  on,  to  give  them  extension 
on  the  spiritual  side.  The  religious  sentiment  ought 
to  be,  and  in  a  measure  is,  the  architectonic  temper 
of  the  world.  The  scope  of  the  relations  it  contem- 
plates, the  development  constantly  going  on  in  its  own 
conceptions,  fit  it  for  this  office.  The  most  compre- 
hensive, the  most  exacting,  and  the  most  sympathetic 
ideas  are  with  it. 

As  a  matter  of  fact,  religion  is  at  once  the  most  con- 
servative and  the  most  radical  of  forces.  Christianity, 
with  all  its  aggressive  claims,  has  yet  wrought  more 
frequently  for  the  preservation  than  the  progress  of 
society.  Professor  Clifford  spoke  of  Christianity  as 
"that  awful  plague  which  has  destroyed  two  civiliza- 
tions, and  has  barely  failed  to  slay  such  promise  of 
good  as  is  now  struggling  to  live  among  men."  l  This 
feeling  arises  in  forgetfulness  of  many  things:  that  the 

1  "  The  Claims  of  Christianity,'.'  W.  S.  Lilly,  p.  232. 


520  RELIGION. 

conservatism  of  religion  inheres  in  the  slowness  of 
movement  in  the  human  mind ;  that  this  conservatism, 
like  other  forms  of  conservatism,  is  the  coherent  force 
of  society  —  a  force  not  too  great  for  the  service  it  has 
to  render;  that  the  movement  of  mind,  if  it  is  to  be 
universal,  profound,  and  permanent,  organic  as  well  as 
rational,  cannot  be  much  accelerated ;  and  that  religion 
itself  furnishes  the  most  potent  correctives  of  its  own 
evils.  It  is  not  a  little  strange  that  those  most  warmly 
committed  to  an  organic  evolution  of  life  encounter  it 
in  the  spiritual  world  with  the  least  insight  into  its 
conditions.  The  language  of  Professor  Huxley  is  more 
appreciative  :  "  I  have  been  seriously  perplexed  to  know 
by  what  practical  measures  the  religious  feeling,  which 
is  the  essential  basis  of  conduct,  was  to  be  kept  up." 
This  language  combines  two  incompatible  things,  at 
least  for  an  evolutionist ;  the  necessity  of  certain  ideas, 
and  their  fallacy.  Religion,  like  other  vital  products, 
must  be  left  to  unfold  within  itself  along  its  own  lines. 
"We  can  alter  it  only  by  taking  part  in  it,  by  fostering 
its  own  forces. 

Religion,  gaining  freedom,  becomes  a  most  potent 
force  in  civil  freedom.  The  energy  of  its  own  life  car- 
ries liberty  in  all  directions.  Religion  retires  more  and 
more  from  the  surface,  mingling  its  own  commands 
with  the  commands  of  the  state,  and  discloses,  as  an 
inner  spiritual  light,  the  scope  of  safety  within  and 
beyond  the  state.  Men  come  to  see  that  higher  duties 
are  ever  springing  up  between  them,  and  that  these 
bring  with  them  improved  forms  of  the  organic  law  of 
the  state.  The  religious  sentiment  lies  at  the  centre 
of  social  growth.     It  does  not  suffer  us  to  feel  that  any 


BELIGION  AND  ETHICS.  521 

obligations  are  complete,  any  failures  final.  It  keeps 
before  us  an  ideal  of  the  largest,  and  of  ever  enlarging, 
dimensions.  It  becomes  inseparable  from  the  fullest 
affiliation  of  life  with  life,  in  reason  and  in  love. 

The  relation  of  religion  to  Ethics  has  been  obscurely 
conceived  by  religionists  and  moralists  alike.  Ethics, 
as  the  inherent  law  of  conduct,  is  the  constructive  plan 
of  God  in  the  world.  Religion  awakens  and  develops 
those  sentiments  which  are  needed  to  sustain  the  moral 
law,  make  it  "a  thing  of  beauty,"  "a  joy  forever." 
Ethics  is  correct  drawing,  religion  exquisite  coloring; 
they  are  the  form  and  the  force  of  the  same  thing,  per- 
fected spiritual  life.  Morality  affirms  complete  lines  of 
conduct ;  religion  gives  ease  and  joy  in  pursuing  them. 

The  effort  to  separate  Ethics  and  Religion  brings, 
in  Ethics,  cold,  formal  obedience ;  in  Religion,  blind 
and  wayward  service.  Ethics  and  Religion  are  vision 
and  joy  in  one  spiritual  world;  the  overflowing  fulness 
of  perfect  action  sustained  by  the  overflowing  fulness  of 
imperishable  love.  Morals  naturalize  Religion,  and  Re- 
ligion gives  a  supernatural  extension  to  Morals. 

The  agnostic  exhorts  us  to  struggle  for  the  "  synthesis 
of  humanity."  If  love  is  the  inner  law  of  the  world, 
this  synthesis  is  possible ;  if  it  is  not,  it  is  impossible. 
But  if  love  is  the  inner  law  of  the  world,  then  there 
is  a  universal  Spiritual  Presence,  on  whose  potency  all 
progress  is  resting. 

The  religious  life,  expanding  outward  under  ethical 
law.  becomes  the  fulness  of  all  life.  A  state  religion, 
save  in  the  earlier  stages  of  development,  is  a  blunder, 
is  leaven  laid  on  the  surface,  not  hidden  in  the  three 
measures   of  meal.      There   is   no    adequate   growth  in 


522  RELIGION. 

society,  growth  that  can  hold  the  ground  that  it  wins, 
save  in  the  ethical,  spiritual  temper.  Here  alone  social 
life  finds  itself.  The  unbeliever  may  discover  the  in- 
adequacy of  the  old  relations;  he  cannot,  in  unbelief, 
replace  them  by  better  ones.  It  is  new  truth  which 
captures  the  mind,  and  sends  it  forth  with  a  gospel, 
gathering  to  itself  great  multitudes.  The  history  of 
the  world  has  been  a  history  of  religion,  and  the  crudity 
of  the  forms  only  shows  how  rudimentary  the  impulse 
still  is.  Science  has  altered,  will  alter,  religious  con- 
ceptions ;  but  each  alteration  will  give  them  new  scope. 

We  may  conceive  this  evolution  of  society  under 
religious  impulse  and  ethical  law  as  fundamentally 
rational,  or  Ave  may  look  upon  Religion  as  adding  over- 
whelming motives  in.  a  process  which  would  otherwise 
have  miscarried.1  Orthodox  faith  and  social  theories 
may  concur  in  assigning  Religion  an  outside,  constraining 
force  in  progress  ;  but  both,  in  so  doing,  greatly  reduce 
the  rationality  of  the  world.  They  bring  to  the  world 
interventions,  and  do  not  suffer  it,  under  its  own  creative 
impulse,  to  reach  its  goal. 

Religion  does,  in  its  incipiency,  take  on  an  external, 
constraining  force  ;  but  this  passes  away  as  it  masters  its 
own  life.  The  religious  temper,  in  its  ignorance,  evokes 
fear,  is  swayed  by  fear,  and  finds  it  a  means  at  hand 
for  swaying  other  minds.  The  organic  force  begets  the 
fear  more  than  the  fear  the  organic  force,  and  the  or- 
ganic force  in  due  order  corrects  the  fear.  The  motives 
change  with  the  insight.  Religion  is  fruitful  in  incen- 
tives, and  the  incentives  are  congenital  with  its  exist- 
ing form.     The  creations  of  faith  are  like  the  mythical 

1  "  Social  Evolution,"  Benjamin  Kidd. 


IMMORTALITY.  523 

inhabitants  of  an  unexplored  continent,  they  act  on  the 
imagination  of  the  explorer,  and  give  place  to  appropri- 
ate facts  as  discovery  advances.  A  movement  that  is 
out  of  darkness  into  light,  cannot  be  rational  in  the 
same  way  as  one  which  takes  place  in  the  light  alone. 
What  we  affirm  is  that  ignorance,  in  the  deep,  wise 
movement  in  which  it  is  embraced,  constantly  leaves 
behind  its  own  perversions,  and  by  means  of  them ' 
passes  beyond  them.  Religion  owes  much  of  its  suprem- 
acy as  an  organic  force  to  the  fact  that  its  conceptions 
are  indigenous  to  the  intellectual  soil  out  of  which 
they  spring,  and  change  with  the  conditions  which  en- 
close them. 

The  incentives  of  religion  find  their  full  extension  in 
the  doctrine  of  immortality.  Immortality,  as  a  belief, 
becomes  ultimately  the  self-assertion  of  spiritual  life. 
It  finds  nothing  beyond  the  spirit  to  confirm  it.  The 
spirit  will  not  let  it  go ;  it  is  wrapped  up  in  its  powers 
and  aspirations.  The  inner  life  fearfully  dwindles  with- 
out it.  Spiritual  life  is  a  bud,  is  but  a  bud,  hence 
immortality.  Immortality  is  the  promise  of  immature 
life,  the  evolutionary  promise  of  the  world.  The  future 
is  for  us  in  the  potentialities  of  the  present.  Here,  in 
the  soul  of  man,  is  a  supreme  potentiality.  Whoso- 
ever liveth  and  believeth  in  me  shall  never  die. 

One  consideration  is  made  to  reduce  this  conviction. 
The  immortality  that  evolution  implies  is  of  society, 
not  of  man.  Here  again  we  come  on  the  organic  force 
of  things.  Society,  as  one  whole,  cannot,  be  perfected 
otherwise  than  in  and  by  its  units.  An  evolution  that 
flings  away  its  successive  achievements  would  grow  in- 
creasingly futile,  increasingly  unbearable.     Every  gain 


524  BEL1GION. 

in  every  man  emphasizes  the  need  of  immortality  as 
the  summation  of  his  hope  and  of  all  hope.  There  is 
nothing  achieved  by  society  which  is  not  achieved  in 
and  for  the  individual.  The  argument  grows  as  men 
grow.  Society  maintains  its  movement  by  virtue  of 
the  incentives  which  lie  treasured  in  each  mind.  These 
personal  powers  fulfil  themselves  at  their  own  centre, 
they  are  not  transferred  to  other  centres.  A  certain  im- 
mortality falls  to  society  because  of  the  grand  quality  of 
its  constituent  elements  ;  if  society  forever  wastes  away 
in  each  person  its  collective  glory  ceases,  its  despair 
becomes  greater  at  every  step.  It  is  in  the  individual 
soul  that  life,  as  unexpended  power,  asserts  itself. 

There  is  an  immeasurable  accumulation  of  motive  in 
the  doctrine  of  immortality.  It  is  the  tap-root  of  social 
life.  Whatever  the  passing  hours  lack  of  spiritual  mo- 
tive is  won  from  the  future.  Life  nourishes  itself  from 
within,  feeds  itself  on  its  own  faith,  and  in  due  order 
the  external  world  accepts  and  falls  in  with  the  com- 
manding impulse.  Immortality  is  the  force  of  fulfil- 
ment in  the  will  of  man  of  its  own  life. 

§  8.  The  immediate  service  of  the  pulpit  is  the  ar- 
ticulation, the  rendering  into  appropriate  beliefs,  rites, 
activities,  the  faith  present  among  men.  The  dogmas 
and  observances  of  religion,  rendered  by  any  community 
of  men  as  they  are  able  to  render  them,  are  so  many 
stages  in  the  upward  trend  of  thought.  The  spiritual 
life  is  nourished  by  them  as  that  life  is,  and  so  is  made 
ready  for  the  next  phase  of  growth.  The  preacher  does 
not  so  much  shape  current  belief,  as  he  is  shaped  by  it, 
giving  it  extension  and  emphatic  utterance.  As  the 
religious   life   calls  for    the    encouragement  of   suitable 


THE  PULPIT.  525 

ordinances  and  fresh  expositions,  the  preacher  is  a 
permanent  part  of  our  social,  spiritual  discipline. 

The  more  difficult  duty  falls  to  the  pulpit  of  extend- 
ing and  making  more  rational  religious  ideas.  It  must 
bring  forth  things  new  as  well  as  old,  watching  over  the 
passage  of  the  old  into  the  new.  The  highest  function 
of  the  pulpit  is  to  lead  in  spiritual  evolution,  to  feel  that 
the  mastery  of  faith  lies  not  chiefly  in  exposition,  but 
in  revelation  ;  not  in  resistance,  but  in  guidance ;  not  in 
the  thing  done,  but  in  the  thing  to  be  done.  .As  our 
social  life  becomes  more  pervasive,  it  takes  to  itself 
many  new  interests.  The  pulpit  must  bring  the  dogmas 
of  faith  into  close  contact  with  events  for  their  govern- 
ment. It  falls  to  the  pulpit  not  merely  to  touch  politics 
in  its  discourse,  but  everything  which  is  a  constituent 
in  the  kingdom  of  heaven.  The  right  of  spiritual 
ideas  is  a  growing   right. 

The  preaching  which  gives  clearness  and  force  to 
truth  in  all  directions  will  be  more  and  more  impersonal, 
not  a  pushing  of  man  by  man,  but  the  impelling  of  each 
mind  by  its  own  convictions.  The  silence  enjoined  on 
the  pulpit  has  often  been  only  the  assertion  of  one's 
right  to  think  and  act  for  himself.  It  has  been  accom- 
panied with  a  concession  of  "  thus  saith  the  Lord,"  in  a 
limited  field.  Neither  the  exclusion  nor  the  concession 
is  just.  One  and  all  must  stand  with  the  truth  in  its 
narrower  and  in  its  broader  expression.  No  man  is 
prepared  to  preach  the  truth  till  his  movement  of 
thought  in  its  presence  becomes  free,  varied,  impersonal. 

The  independence  of  the  pulpit  is  of  that  absolute 
character  in  which  it  shakes  itself  loose  from  advocacy, 
from  authority,  and  leads  the  listeners  deeply  into  their 


t 


26  RELIGION. 


own  thoughts.  The  pulpit,  expounding  for  men  the 
spiritual  movement  among  men,  must  hold  the  world  at 
arm's  length,  scan  it  closely,  and  render  it  in  terms  of 
the  kingdom  of  heaven.  This  function  so  transcends 
the  best  achievement  of  man,  that  it  always  leaves  the 
soul  full  of  aspiration.  The  effort  is  a  new  one,  and  a 
nobler  one,  in  each  generation.  The  growth  in  the 
power  of  the  pulpit  means  the  growth,  at  large,  of  the 
religious  life.  The  pulpit  will  become  empty  only  as 
faith  and  spiritual  truth  perish. 


EVOLUTION  IN  SOCIETY.  527 


CHAPTER   II. 
SOCIOLOGY    AND    EVOLUTION. 

§  1.  Sociology,  as  its  drift  becomes  more  apparent, 
will  unite  itself  closely  to  philosophy  and  history.  It 
will  be  seen  to  be  an  evolution  that  gathers  up  and  com- 
pletes many  other  forms  of  progress.  The  notion  of 
evolution  has  been  by  far  the  most  stimulative  'idea  of 
our  time.  It  is  an  assertion  of  the  universality,  the  con- 
tinuity, of  knowledge.  It  involves  not  only  a  depen- 
dence of  each  event  on  a  previous  one,  a  connection  of 
each  event  laterally  with  all  other  events ;  it  implies  a 
supreme  movement  which  draws  all  events  into  itself,  as 
a  river  its  tributaries.  Evolution  cannot  complete  itself 
save  in  one  comprehensive  result.  So  far  as  any  events 
fall  off  or  become  immaterial,  the  impelling  idea  has  lost 
them,  and  they  lose  themselves.  Movement  becomes 
aimless,  insignificant,  retrogressive. 

An  evolution  in  society  is  the  only  evolution  suffi- 
ciently comprehensive  to  gather  up  and  guide  all  other 
lines  of  force.  Social  progress,  therefore,  above  all  other 
terms  of  knowledge,  gives  completeness  to  our  thought. 
Evolution,  as  an  idea,  seeks' extension  with  the  same 
vigor  with  which  it  seeks  reorganization.  One  move- 
ment must  embrace  and  expound  another,  and  all 
must  become  parts  in  a  more  comprehensible  conception. 
Without  this  we  lose  again  the  notion  of  all  inclusive, 
causal  relations.     Evolution  in  society,  between  men  as 


528  RELIGION. 

lifted  into  a  higher  spiritual  value,  is  evidently  the 
only  term  which  can  combine  and  complete  all  other 
terms. 

This  development  involves  both  increments  and  deter- 
minate direction.  It  is  not  a  revolution  in  which  iden- 
tical parts  pass  through  a  circuit  of  positions ;  it  is 
not  a  kaleidoscope  in  which  mere  motion  calls  out  change- 
able patterns.  Such  conceptions  leave  events  aimless, 
and  so  render  the  lines  of  causation  which  unite  them 
meaningless.  The  world,  as  one  whole,  is,  like  each  liv- 
ing thing  in  it,  subject  to  a  plastic  power  getting  to 
itself  new  possibilities,  issuing  in  more  complex  and 
complete  combinations.  The  movement,  however,  is 
truly  evolutionary,  as  each  stage  and  every  increment 
find  their  significance  in  previous  stages  and  increments. 
The  web  is  unbroken,  the  coherence  is  vital. 

§  2.  Development  in  society  involves  the  possibility 
of  indefinite  development  in  man.  It  assumes  that  man 
has  not  exhausted  his  physical  or  his  intellectual  or  his 
spiritual  powers.  The  spiritual  terms  carry  with  them 
the  physical  ones  ;  the  body  can  and  must  keep  pace 
with  the  mind.  There  is  at  no  point  any  indication  of 
any  inability  to  go  farther.  The  spiritual  affections,  the 
wise  and  just  sentiments  which  unite  us  to  our  fellow- 
men,  are  plainly  incipient.  We  are  only  finding  the 
field  which  lies  before  them,  not  reaching  its  limits. 

Social  evolution  also  postulates  the  possibility  of  in- 
definite progress  in  society.  It  assumes  that  there  is, 
at  bottom,  no  clash  of  interests  ;  that  existing  difficulties 
are  the  result  of  deficient  knowledge,  defective  feeling, 
and  may  pass  away.  They  are  simply  the  chaos  that 
evolution  is  to  rule  into  creation.     There  is  no  real,  no 


POSTULATES.  529 

permanent,  self-sacrifice  in  progress.  The  well-being  of 
all  means  the  highest  well-being  of  each.  We  save  our 
lives  by  losing  them.  Those  who  doubt  individual  de- 
velopment often  concede  social  development.  Yet  the 
second  conception  involves  the  first.  Society  must  win 
its  perfection  through  its  constituents.  The  value  of 
the  units  measures  the  collective  value.  It  is  by  the 
possible  gains  of  men  in  and  with  each  other,  that  im- 
mortality becomes  a  rational  hope. 

Social  evolution  also  postulates  a  movement  in  the 
physical  universe,  concurrent  with  and  supporting  the 
spiritual  development.  The  not-ourselves  must  make 
for  righteousness.  The  spiritual  world  could  not  resist 
a  determined  separation  from  itself  of  the  physical 
world.  Art,  as  an  intellectual  inheritance,  is  made 
possible  by  works  of  art,  art  that  has  found  its  way 
into  the  physical  world  and  made  of  itself  visible  and 
permanent  presence.  The  spiritual  world,  though  built 
up  between  man  and  man,  finds  its  terms  of  expression 
and  power  in  a  physical  world  shaped  and  reshaped 
to  its  own  ends. 

One  other  postulate  among  these  already  great  postu- 
lates is,  that  a  Spirit  of  Truth  calls  out,  makes  increas- 
ingly conscious  and  concurrent,  these  upward  tendencies. 
That  which  is  revelation  without  is  inspiration  within. 
The  good  is  not  unknown  to  itself,  it  is  self-contained. 
A  world  of  things  is  co-ordinated  with  a  world  of 
thoughts,  and  there  is  a  universal  Presence  of  Truth 
of  which  we  are  partakers. 

§  3.  Is  there  anything  iti  history  to  justify  these  pos- 
tulates, and  the  expectations  which  follow  from  them? 
The    physical    world    is   most  plainly   submitting    itself, 


530  RELIGION. 

with  startling  concessions,  to  the  hand  of  man.  His 
powers  are  not  embarrassed  by  the  paucity,  but  by  the 
wealth,  of  means.  It  is  hard  work  to  bring  men  up, 
in  their  moral  tone,  to  a  wholesome  use  of  the  gifts  of 
Nature.  We  have  armed  hate  and  anarchy  with 
weapons  fit  only  for  archangels.  The  means  of  welfare 
accumulate  in  our  hands;  we  have  a  growing  vantage 
in  reference  to  the  future ;  we  have  storehouses  of 
all  sorts,  physical  and  intellectual,  filled  with  the  fruits 
of  the  labors  of  those  who  have  gone  before  us.  Each 
generation  leaves  a  better  world  than  that  into  which 
it  was  born.  We  disguise  this  fact  from  ourselves  by 
ignorance,  by  a  querulous  temper,  by  an  indolent  hope 
which  neglects  its  means  of  fulfilment;  but  it  remains 
as  the  most  certain  general  affirmation  we  can  make 
about  the  world. 

Personal  power  thrives  under  the  discipline  of  the 
world.  Some  doubt  this.  Personal  dimensions  seem  to 
have  dwindled.  The  picturesque  contrasts  of  society 
have  disappeared.  Greatness,  like  an  abraded  monu- 
ment, has  been  softened  down.  Most  of  these  impres- 
sions are  superficial,  the  lack  of  spiritual  perspective. 
The  average  man  is  the  point  from  which  all  our  mea- 
surements must  be  taken,  and  this  point  is  one  of  grow- 
ing elevation.  We  have  no  reason  to  doubt  that  out  of 
a  stronger  spiritual  soil  will  spring  men,  not  perchance 
more  controlling,  for  control  is  a  question  of  relative 
strength,  but  of  equal  and  superior  magnitude  to  those 
who  have  preceded  them.  There  are  lives  among  us 
that  enlarge  our  sense  of  manhood.  What  Ave  have  lost 
is  scenic  effect,  and  this  in  behalf  of  inner  power. 

At  no  one  point  has  the  loosening  of  bonds,  the  gains 


FIRST  LAW  OF  GROWTH.  531 

of  vital  force,  been  more  conspicuous  than  in  religion. 
If  there  is  less  implicit  faith  to-day,  estimated  in  ref- 
erence to  any  one  creed,  there  is  far  greater  faith, 
evidenced  as  an  independent  hold  of  many  minds  on 
spiritual  truth.  Much  that  passes  as  unbelief  is  belief 
of  a  higher  order.  Men  have  achieved  the  spiritual 
world  as  an  open  field,  where  ideas  hold  an  uninter- 
rupted way,  as  never  before.  This  is  simply  saying  that 
evolution  is  taking  to  itself  room.  There  is  enough  m 
these  considerations,  taken  collectively,  to  compose  and 
assure  the  mind,  though  it  starts  out  with  a  sense  of 
loss  and  danger. 

§  4.  We  turn  to  the  laws  of  spiritual  growth.  We 
understand  by  a  law  a  line  of  action  arising  under  a 
single  force,  or  a  combination  of  forces.  The  lines  of 
movement  in  society  are  the  result  of  very  complex 
causes,  the  equilibrium  of  many  conflicting  tendencies. 

A  first  law  in  society  is  that  the  relations  of  men  one 
with  another  become  ever  more  complex.  This  is  true 
in  the  household,  in  the  community,  in  the  nation, 
between  nations.  The  integration  of  life  is  much 
dwelt  on  by  Spencer;  the  integration  of  society  is 
equally  obvious. 

.Man  has  the  range  of  the  globe  as  no  other  animal 
has  it.  He  adjusts  himself  to  all  climates,  and  em- 
braces, in  his  traffic,  the  products  of  all  soils.  The 
world  is  rapidly  becoming  a  single  market.  One  raises 
wheat;  his  competitors  are  scattered  through  the  world. 
Each  man  must  adjust  his  pursuits  to  all  kinds  of  men 
and  portions  of  the  earth.  The  doctrine  of  protection 
is  brought  forward  to  shut  out  these  disturbing  forces, 
and  it  fails,  because  the  causes  it  aims  to  affect  are  too 


532  RELIGION. 

complex  for  it ;  the  results  of  its  readjustments  are  not 
those  contemplated. 

The  political  dependencies  of  nations  and  races  are 
constantly  becoming  more  extended  and  various.  The 
war  between  Japan  and  China,  a  century  since,  would 
have  been  a  matter  of  comparative  indifference  to  Eu- 
rope. Africa  was  scarcely  thought  of,  now  it  is  the 
subject,  in  every  part  of  it,  of  lively  contention.  The 
network  of  political  dependencies  has  received  a  new 
cast,  and  fallen  over  the  world.  Yet  these  are  but  the 
beginning  of  more  delicate  relations. 

The  intellectual  complexity  of  society  is  in  advance 
of  its  physical  complexity.  Literature,  science,  art,  are 
world-wide  in  their  action  and  reaction.  They  reach 
backward  along  the  entire  historic  path,  and  are  ready 
to  send  a  commanding  flood  into  the  future.  The  me- 
chanical inventions,  which  give  efficiency  to  men's 
thoughts,  have  brought  the  world  into  a  narrow  compass. 
The  rapidity  of  interchange  evokes  in  every  man  his 
best  contribution  to  the  common  life,  and  makes  him  a 
full  participant  in  it.  The  brain  of  man,  a  marvel  of 
subtile  dependencies,  becomes  a  keyboard  on  which  the 
whole  world  is  at  play. 

The  spiritual  interactions  and  integrations  are  becom- 
ing alike  numerous.  This  fact  gained  scenic  expression 
in  the  Parliament  of  Religions.  Each  faith  had  some- 
thing to  say  in  defence  and  attack  ;  each  offered  itself  as 
a  factor  in  the  general  result.  Hard  and  fast  lines  are 
giving  way,  not,  as  we  believe,  in  loss  of  outline,  but  in 
favor  of  more  subtile,  pliant,  and  comprehensive  concep- 
tions. It  is  not  that  all  clouds,  as  so  many  obstructions, 
are  to  disappear  in  a  clear,  empty  sky  of  belief,  but  that 


SECOND    LAW   OF  GROWTH.  533 

storm  clouds  are  to  break  up  and  float  away,  coming  and 
going  with  a  creative  impulse  all  their  own,  and  gather- 
ing and  scattering  light  in  many  marvellous  ways. 

A  special  example  of  widened  relations  is  offered  in 
what  we  know  as  the  emancipation  of  women.  Primi- 
tive connections,  resting  largely  on  physical  force,  are 
giving  way  in  the  presence  of  intellectual  and  social  im- 
pulses that  call  for  wider  terms  of  life,  and  will  in  turn 
reflect  them  hack  on  the  household  and  the  community. 
The  excellence  of  the  movement  is  that  it  pulls  down  so 
much  order  to  rebuild  it  into  a  higher  order ;  that  it 
starts  actions  and  reactions  which  will  work  their  way  in 
all  directions. 

A  second,  closely  associated,  law.  is  that  of  increasing 
mobility  in  social  relations.  The  more  complex  a  social 
state,  the  more  readily  it  yields  to  new  conditions,  and 
the  more  power  it  has  to  resist  the  destructive  tenden- 
cies associated  with  them.  A  complex  organization  in- 
volves many  points  of  contact  with  its  environment,  but 
also  gives  many  points  of  reaction  against  it  and  with 
it.  The  more  complex  equilibrium  has  more  resources 
of  restoration,  as  when  one  walks  a  rope  with  a  balan- 
cing pole. 

Government  is  an  illustration  in  order.  The  more 
fully  the  liberties  of  a,  people  are  expressed  and  pro- 
tected, the  more  readily  are  new  claims  met,  the  more 
open  is  the  state  to  those  changes  which  anticipate  revo- 
lution. The  elastic  body  suffers  less  from  collision  than 
the  inelastic  one.  The  highly  organized  body  of  man  is 
more  readily  acclimated  than  the  less  organized  body  of 
the  animal;  and  the  civilized  man  thrives  better  under 
new  conditions  than  the  uncivilized  man.     The  greater 


534  EELIGION. 

the  resources  of  a  nation,  the  less  is  any  one  set  of  cus- 
toms or  circumstances  essential.  It  is  by  virtue  of  this 
adaptability  that  the  English  colonize  so  easily  in  all 
continents.  The  more  civilized  the  nation,  the  less  it 
suffers  from  contact  with  barbarism.  In  religion,  the 
purer  the  faith,  the  more  readily  it  accepts  instruction 
and  makes  concession. 

An  example  in  hand  is  the  changed  relations  of  the 
Southern  States.  They  are  not  as  fragile,  as  explosive, 
or  as  exacting  as  they  were  under  slavery.  All  that 
is  needful  to  make  them  thoroughly  self-contained  is 
a  growing  sense  of  justice.  Under  a  reorganization  of 
rights,  the  two  races  will  correlate  in  more  ways,  coa- 
lese  in  more  interests,  and  render  each  other  more 
service,  than  under  the  simple  and,  as  it  was  thought, 
unobjectionable  relation  of  slavery. 

A  third  law,  involved  in  the  two  previous  ones,  is  that 
of  continuity.  It  follows  from  the  most  inclusive  of  re- 
lations, those  of  causes  and  reasons.  Geology  among 
sciences  owes  its  progress  to  the  rejection  of  cataclysms, 
sudden  and  extended  changes.  The  development  of  life 
on  the  globe  is  inconsistent  with  rapid  and  wide-reach- 
ing revolutions.  Each  new  adaptation  must  have  time 
enough  for  its  full  establishment.  Even  the  purely 
mechanical  changes  which  fit  the  world  to  become  the 
abode  of  plants  and  animals  are  thwarted  by  the  vio- 
lent activity  of  fire  and  water.  It  is  the  slow  weather- 
ing process  and  gentle  transfer  which  make  the  earth 
soft  in  outline  and  fruitful  in  soil. 

The  law  of  continuity,  though  it  may  seem  less  strin- 
gent in  the  intellectual  world,  is  hardly  so,  especially  if 
we  take  men  collectively.     There  is  no  basis  for  the  feel- 


THIRD   LAW  OF  GROWTH.  535 

ing  that  communities  can  be  taught  new  truths  at  once. 
Eevelation  is  bound  down  to  the  lines  and  movements  of 
intellectual  and  social  propagation.  A  knowing  process 
is  rigidly  coherent;  nothing  can  be  omitted,  nothing 
slurred.  But  emotional  activity  in  a  man,  in  a  com- 
munity, is  still  more  coherent,  looking  for  firmness  and 
support  in  all  directions. 

The  great  man  is  far  less  potent  than  he  seems  to  be. 
His  words  and  ideas  are  ineffective,  unless  they  are 
beginning  to  be  shared  by  many.  He  is  only  the  best 
expression  of  tendencies  implanted  in  the  public  mind. 
He  leads,  because  so  many  are  ready  to  follow.  The 
Christian  faith  has  been  in  the  earth  many  centuries, 
and  it  is  as  yet  in  the  earliest  stages  of  germination. 
Spiritual  sentiments  are  subject  to  a  close,  interior  de- 
pendence. Better  feelings  arise  in  conflict  with  inferior 
ones,  and  must  have  time  to  displace  them.  Ethical 
attainments  are  achieved  very  slowly.  They  imply  a 
transformation  of  action  and  feeling  and  insight  by 
which  all  things  become  new. 

Xo  one  man  can  attain  moral  strength  except  in  a 
community  which  gives  extended  and  felicitous  play  to 
the  affections.  The  vices  and  the  defects  of  the  men 
with  whom  he  comes  in  contact  subject  him  to  constant 
limitations  in  the  origination  and  expression  of  a  true 
and  large  life.  Its  conditions  are  not  present.  It  is 
from  this  fact,  in  part,  that  men  have  so  often  fallen 
into  asceticism,  a  desertion  of  life,  not  a  victory  in  it. 
Perfect  physical  health  means  universal  health;  perfect 
moral  soundness  means  universal  soundness,  a  full  circle 
of  wholesome  relations. 

ZS'o  one  nation  can  escape   war   while  other  nations 


536  RELIGION. 

pursue  it.  Mutual  disarmament  is  the  condition  of  per- 
fect disarmament.  The  virtue  of  one  man  becomes  ef- 
fective by  means  of  the  virtues  of  other  men.  It  calls 
these  out,  and  is  in  turn  called  out  by  them.  Many 
most  desirable  expressions  of  good-will  are  not  in  order 
in  vicious  surroundings.  The  growth  of  liberty  in  Eng- 
land has  become  so  complete  because  it  has  been  so 
continuous  and  so  comprehensive.  Sentiments,  cus- 
toms, interests,  have  shaped  themselves  to  it,  and  in 
turn  sustain  it.  The  violent  changes  that  France  has 
undergone  make  further  violence  imminent. 

A  fourth  law  is  that  every  phase  of  movement  in- 
volves the  conditions  of  further  movement  —  the  law  of 
increasing  change.  The  social  world  even  more  than 
the  physical  world  is  in  unstable  equilibrium.  While 
matter,  by  its  mechanical  and  chemical  properties,  is 
tending  to  equilibrium,  that  equilibrium  is  constantly 
disturbed  by  the  intervention  of  life.  What  may  seem 
conflict  between  the  two  resolves  itself  into  forward 
movement.  The  chapter  of  accidents  is  never  at  an 
end.  A  new  condition  resolves  itself  into  a  new  im- 
pulse. Evolution  goes  forward  by  virtue  of  unceasing 
interaction,  as  the  bicyclist  encounters  and  triumphs, 
in  rapid  succession,  over  a  series   of  possible  failures. 

Cross-fertilization  in  the  vegetable  world  prevents  a 
too  stable  equilibrium.  Society  is  cross-fertilized,  is 
disturbed  from  within  and  disturbed  from  without,  and 
can  settle  down  into  no  finality.  Its  own  motion  alters 
its  terms  of  motion  for  itself,  and  for  all  about  it. 
Every  incentive  encloses  another. 

This  is  seen  in  the  rapidity  with  which  faith  is  com- 
pelled to  readjust  its  conceptions  to  bring  them  in  har- 


FIFTH  LAW  OF  GROW  Til.  537 

mony  with  new  facts  in  science,  in  philosophy,  in  social 
life.  Ideas  are  fertilized  through  the  whole  range  of 
ideas. 

Outer  forces  also  break  in  on  each  social  form  that  is 
settling  together  within  itself.  There  comes  a  renais- 
sance in  which  a  bygone  world,  with  all  its  mature 
seeds  of  philosophy  and  art,  takes  possession  of  a  fresh 
soil.  If  a  nation,  like  the  Chinese,  crowds  out  conflict- 
ing forces,  and  shuts  itself  up  to  its  own  retarded  move- 
ment, there  comes,  in  due  time,  some  heavy  shattering 
blow,  which  opens  up  afresh  the  whole  problem.  The 
Western  world,  forcing  its  way  into  Japan,  has  brought 
to  it  at  once  a  new  career.  The  social  world,  gaining 
in  dimensions  and  interventions,  is  ever  less  and  less 
exposed  to  the  arrest  of  any  partially  stable  equilibrium. 

Destructive  terms,  like  diseases,  reach  a  crisis,  and 
then  make  way  for  restored  health.  In  Paris,  where 
social  forces  are  only  too  volatile,  there  is  a  tendency 
to  a  periodical  accumulation  of  anarchical  elements. 
In  1848  and  1849  some  ten  thousand  anarchists  were 
slain,  in  1871  some  twenty  thousand,  and  now  again 
they  begin  to  gather.  Evils  give  the  occasion  and 
distinct  demand  for  better  adjustments. 

A  fifth  law,  united  in  the  same  close  way  to  previous 
ones,  is  that  these  changes  lie,  as  one  whole,  in  a  def- 
inite, constructive  direction.  This  is  the  law  of  pro- 
ductive change.  In  the  plant  and  the  animal,  the  sport 
that  becomes  the  basis  of  a  new  variety  does  not  repre- 
sent an  arbitrary  change  without  significance  in  the 
structure  as  one  whole.  It  involves  subsidiary  changes, 
and  carries  with  it  a  more  or  less  new  balance  of  parts. 
It  is  a  new  phase  of  life.     This  is  sure  to  be  still  more 


538  RELIGION. 

true  in  society,  because  the  changes. in  society  operate 
by  a  definite  appeal  to  what  is  easier,  more  harmonious, 
or  more  just.  The  instincts  and  interests  of  man  as  a 
social  being  work  together  constructively,  and  come  dis- 
tinctly and  increasingly  under  the  shaping  and  reshap- 
ing power  of  reason.  If  through  indolence  or  vice  the 
social  type  becomes  stationary,  or  falls  back,  natural 
selection  acts  against  it  with  unusual  vigor. 

All  reformatory  movement  definitely  opposes  itself  to 
existing  conditions,  and  overcomes  them,  if  it  overcomes 
them  at  all,  by  urging  better  relations.  Each  change 
becomes  a  series  of  changes,  and  reconciles  itself  thereby 
more  perfectly  with  itself  and  with  the  demand.  New 
ideas,  like  that  of  a  "social  contract,"  new  theories, 
like  Socialism,  spring  up  with  a  distinct  impulse,  and, 
acting  on  the  old  terms  of  order,  soften  them  and  are 
subdued  to  them  according  to  the  fitness  of  their  pur- 
pose. Any  idea,  moving  in  a  medium  resistful  by  cus- 
tom, can  come  to  pervade  it  only  by  some  intrinsic  force 
or  sound  reason  that  is  in  "it.  If  causes  measure  them- 
selves with  causes,  still  more  do  reasons  measure  them- 
selves with  reasons ;  and  a  movement  which  embraces 
both  causes  and  reasons  is  the  more  certain  to  find  the 
constructive  lines  —  the  lines  of  least  resistance. 

A  sixth  law  in  sequence  is  that  the  entire  movement 
will  be  increasingly  synthetic.  This  is  the  law  of  unity. 
If  we  have  close-knit  lines  of  causation,  coherent  ra- 
tional relations,  we  must  have  correspondingly  compre- 
hensive interdependencies.  They  can  no  more  fail  to 
act  on  each  other,  and  so  flow  into  each  other,  than 
they  can  fail  to  be  continuous  within  themselves.  Phys- 
ical sequences  cannot  proceed   side  by  side  without  a 


SIXTH  LAW   OF  GROWTH.  539 

series  of  actions  and  reactions  which  unite  them  in  one 
whole  ;  still  less  can  intellectual  and  social  relations. 
Thought  is  inquisitive  and  acquisitive  alike  in  all  di- 
rections ;  the  feelings  find  their  impulse  in  many  objects. 
The  only  equilibrium  possible  is  one  which  covers  the 
whole  field.  With  what  outlay  of  labor,  with  what 
scorn  of  hardship,  have  men  explored  the  world  in  its 
most  remote  parts;  with  what  indefatigable  inquiry 
have  they  pursued  minute  things  that  by  means  of  them 
knowledge  might  be  made  more  comprehensive.  The 
discoverer,  investigator,  historical  critic,  scatter  off  into 
innumerable  and  remote  fields,  all  under  the  one  convic- 
tion that  they  shall  return  with  some  fresh  constructive 
clews. 

How  futile  have  been  all  efforts  to  lay  down  a  divid- 
ing line  between  faith  and  knowledge.  The  trespass  is 
instant  and  mutual.  The  monist,  not  satisfied  with  a 
spiritual  unity  of  ideas,  seeks  also  an  absolute  unity  of 
substance.  Nothing  is  more  conspicuous  than  the  hasty 
generalizations  by  which  men,  often  at  fearful  sacrifice 
of  parts,  strive  to  build  their  thoughts  together  into  one 
rational  whole.  They  cast  and  cast  again  the  net  of 
theory,  long  before  it  is  large  enough  to  sweep  the 
waters  before  them. 

Yet  more  tenacious  of  unity  are  the  spiritual  affec- 
tions. Nothing  which  concerns  goodness  in  any  time, 
place,  or  person  is  alien  to  them.  They  are  universal 
feeders  in  the  spiritual  world,  and  increasingly  so  as 
they  discern  how  much  more  universal  and  variable  a 
thing  is  a  divine  temper  than  they  had  first  thought, 
it  to  lie.  The  affections  have  found  their  single  syn- 
thetic impulse,  love,  and  are  now  busy  in  unfolding  its 
contents. 


540  RELIGION. 

Each  succeeding  unity  embraces  and  transcends  each 
preceding  one.  Physical  dependencies  are  caught  up  by 
the  mind,  turned  into  constructive  ideas,  and  used  as  a 
further  means  of  framing  together  the  two  worlds.  The 
affections  turn  the  unity  of  thought  into  a  pervasive 
impulse  of  pleasure,  worship,  and  love.  Social  unity 
brings  all  together,  and  by  virtue  of  all  builds  up  the 
kingdom  of  heaven. 

The  world  is  taken  up  more  and  more  into  a  higher 
common  consciousness  —  the  higher  the  consciousness 
the  more  free  it  is  to  all  —  wherein  the  Spirit  of  Truth 
subdues  all  things,  transfigures  all  things,  and  reconciles 
them  all  in  a  creation  comprehensive  enough  to  contain 
them  all.  The  imperishable  synthetic  force  of  the 
world  is  the  Spirit  of  Truth  by  which  we  are  led  into 
all  truth  —  the  coherent  power  of  the  world  in  which 
we  are. 

TVe  may  add  another  law,  the  final  expression  of  all 
we  have  given.  Development  is  a  measured,  rhythmi- 
cal, accelerated  movement.  It  is  a  measured  movement, 
because  only  thus  can  every  part  be  integrated  with 
every  other  part.  No  energy  is  lost  in  the  moral  world. 
Each  portion  has  a  work  of  construction  or  correction, 
of  impulse  or  restraint.  The  final  equilibrium  reckons 
with  them  all.  No  matter,  in  the  physical  world,  how 
many  are  the  mechanical  and  chemical  forces  at  work, 
they  are  all  represented  in  the  ultimate  product,  and 
that  product  is  reached  with  corresponding  delay. 
Vital  powers  adjust  themselves  through  many  genera- 
tions to  given  conditions,  and  in  the  meantime  the 
conditions  take  on  new  change. 

Men,  as  in  the  United  States,  suppose  that  free  insti- 


SEVENTH   LAW   OF  GROWTH.  541 

tutions  will  of  themselves  bring  good  government.  Tliey 
not  only  fail  to  do  so,  they  give  occasion  to  many  new 
demands,  and  impose  new  duties,  under  the  penalty  of 
failure  more  signal  than  ever.  In  opening  a  path  to 
power,  the  citizen  falls  at  once  on  the  new  lesson  of 
how  to  pursue  it.  We  look  to  education  to  guide  the 
people,  but  we  discover  immediately  that  education  must 
take  on  new  and  better  forms,  or  it  leaves  men  astray 
in  a  wider  field  than  before.  Circumstances  are  always 
exacting  newer  and  higher  forms  of  obedience. 

The  movement  will  be  rhythmical.  Single  ideas,  sin- 
gle impulses,  take  strong  possession  of  the  community. 
Men  entertain  an  exaggerated  idea  of  the  power  latent 
in  methods.  The  correction  can  be  made  by  experi- 
ence alone ;  and,  being  made,  there  is  a  reaction  toward 
opposite  beliefs.  An  army  is  disorganized  by  the  haste 
of  its  own  advance.  A  halt  is  called  that  order  and 
discipline  may  be  restored. 

This  rhythmical  movement  is  very  conspicuous  in  civil 
life.  The  England  that  beheaded  Charles  I.  made  a  fes- 
tive day  of  the  return  of  Charles  II.,  and  a  little  later 
expelled  the  House  of  Stuart.  The  history  of  a  hun- 
dred years  was  expressed  in  a  rapid  series  of  actions 
and  reactions,  and  slowly  passed  into  constitutional 
liberty.  The  French  Revolution  was  followed  by  the 
Holy  Alliance. 

Catholicism  had  no  sooner  established  a  universal 
church,  given  definite  form  to  the  nations  of  Christen- 
dom, than  the  multifarious  personal  forces  which  had 
sprung  up  under  her  shelter  broke  away  into  the  many, 
and  oftentimes  insignificant,  schisms  of  Protestantism. 
A  reactionary  movement  of  reform  swept  through  the 


542  RELIGION. 

Catholic  Church,  and  its  unity  was  strengthened  anew  in 
Jesuitism. 

Both  ideas  are  now  present  in  thoughtful  minds, — 
the  unity  of  faith  and  the  freedom  of  faith,  —  the  two 
demanding  a  higher  realm  of  life.  The  correction  of 
religious  methods  was  impossible  without  the  belli- 
gerent, half-blind  •  action  of  Protestantism.  So  now 
through,  and  in  a  measure  by  means  of,  its  rigidity 
of  doctrine,  we  are  emerging  into  a  path  larger,  wider, 
deeper,  than  ever  before.  Ritualism  followed  Methodism 
because  the  mind  of  man  cannot,  as  yet,  keep  alive  any 
given  ritual  with  a  fitting  spiritual  impulse,  nor  express 
a  living  impulse  otherwise  than  by  a  suitable  ritual. 
AYe  move  forward  by  a  rhythmical  passage  from  the 
one  position  to  the  other. 

The  development  is  an  accelerated  one.  The  wider 
the  spaces  covered  by  it,  the  larger  is  the  number  of 
actions  and  reactions  set  up,  each  hastening  the  general 
movement.  Moreover,  this  entire  field  and  every  part 
of  it  become  more  mobile  by  virtue  of  the  changes 
already  induced.  It  is  earlier  concessions  that  'are  ex- 
pensive. If  we  look  at  the  world  of  faith,  we  shall  see 
that  the  changes  in  the  past  fifty  years  have  exceeded 
those  of  many  previous  centuries,  and  that  the  ebb  and 
flow  of  belief  have  become  so  constant  as  to  excite  but 
little  attention.  The  irrational  fear  of  any  form  of 
unbelief  has  passed  away. 

The  danger  which  attends  this  facility  of  movement 
is  that  change  shall  become  superficial,  and  not  a  safe 
propagating  centre  for  subsequent  changes.  If  this  hap- 
pens, the  spiritual  world  begins  to  show  the  same  law  of 
atavism  as  the  biological  world,  and  comes  to  take  up 


THE  CHANGES   INCIDENT   TO   CHANGE.      543 

again  a  blind  persistency  of  belief  as  the  only  defence 
against  meaningless  modifications  of  faith. 

The  great  advantage  of  any  profound  organic  change, 
like  the  enfranchisement  of  women,  is  that,  threatening 
many  evils,  it  sets  in  motion  many  corrections,  and  carries 
its  readjustments  into  the  entire  temper  of  society.  The 
earlier  steps  are  laborious,  because  so  many  ties  begin  at 
once  to  feel  the  strain ;  and  some  begin  to  cry  out,  This 
reform  is  against  nature.  But  what  at  first  seems  to  be 
mischievous  is  often  found  to  be  an  essential  part  of  the 
gain,  new  and  better  bonds  taking  the  place  of  those 
which  have  been  broken.  A  just  movement  carries  itself 
forward  by  motives  which  it  itself  supplies. 

The  dangers  alter  as  development  progresses.  In  the 
beginning,  the  movement  is  intolerably  slow;  later  it 
becomes  dangerously  rapid.  It  carries  itself  by  its  own 
momentum  beyond  the  limits  set  for  it.  We  think  dis- 
paragingly of  the  man  of  one  idea,  when  he  is  only 
patiently  bestowing  those  repeated  blows  which  carry 
cleavage  into  the  heart  of  the  rock.  We  accept  more 
readily  the  later  expounder  of  progress,  though  he  is 
expanding  the  conceptions  quite  away  from  the  facts 
which  gave  rise  to  them. 

The  phenomena  of  social  and  spiritual  life  are  so 
much  wider  than  our  vision,  that  we  are  easily  too  san- 
guine and  too  despondent.  It  is  well  at  times  to  think 
that  the  spiritual  world  can  move  much  faster  than  it 
does  move.  The  very  thought  helps  to  accelerate 
change.  If,  on  the  other  hand,  we  become  discouraged  ; 
if  we  look  upon  new  supersensuous  incentives  as  essen- 
tially alien  to  the  ruling  forces,  as  exceedingly  dispro- 
portionate to  their  work,  and  often  wholly  futile,  it  is 


544  RELIGION. 

because  Ave  have  no  adequate  conception  of  the  compre- 
hensiveness and  grandeur  of  a  moral  creation,  of  the 
many  generations  and  the  myriads  in  each  generation 
who  must  take  part  in  it,  and  of  its  profoundly  vital 
character.  The  physical,  the  organic,  and  the  spiritual 
worlds  flow  together  in  it,  in  it  achieve  an  equilibrium 
of  mutually  corrective  and  sustaining  forces,  till  the 
purpose  of  God  becomes  apparent  in  the  kingdom  of 
heaven. 

A  free  people  plays  an  important  part  in  social  devel- 
opment, not  so  much  by  presenting  an  example  of 
well-ordered  life  under  definite  institutions,  as  in  becom- 
ing the  confluent  centre  at  which  physical,  educational, 
spiritual  forces  meet  and  demand  ever-improved  rela- 
tions. It  falls  to  a  free  citizen  to  think  and  act  in  more 
directions,  under  more  varied  motives,  for  more  compre- 
hensive purposes,  than  to  any  other  citizen.  The  accel- 
erated movements  of  civilization  overtake  him  as  they 
do  not  another.  He  is  pre-eminent  by  virtue  of  dangers 
and  possibilities,  by  virtue  of  many  liberated  forces, 
which  have  been  flung  upon  him  and  which  he  must 
help  to  govern.  No  doctrine  is  less  becoming  the  citizen 
of  a  free  nation  than  that  of  extreme  individualism. 
Freedom  is  always  granted  in  behalf  of  larger,  more 
rational  powers ;  and  national  freedom  in  behalf  of  col- 
lective, national  power.  In  tyrannical  institutions,  we 
may  neglect  much ;  in  free  institutions,  we  can  neglect 
nothing.  The  safety  of  freedom  is  won  in  freedom 
alone ;  and  freedom  for  us  as  a  people  means  freedom  in 
the  construction  of  our  social  life.  These  are  the  duties 
and  these  the  lessons  that  are  upon  us.  We  have 
momentary  occasion  to  ask,  What  shall  we  do  ?     We 


THE   URGENCY  OF  THE  HOUR.  545 

have  no  occasion  to  ask  that  something  shall  be  given  us 
to  do.  The  accelerated  movement  of  many  centuries 
has  overtaken  us,  and  we  are  but  partially  ready  for  it, 
in  earnestness  of  action,  in  comprehensiveness  of  pur- 
pose, in  that  self-negation  which  leaves  us  free  partakers 
in  large  events.  Nothing  else  so  widens  and  deepens 
our  life  as  a  true  outlook  on  society.  Our  liberty  will 
subserve  but  a  very  inadaquate  purpose  if  it  does  not 
call  out  collective  as  well  as  personal  power;  if  it  does 
not  hold  the  two  in  that  organic  equilibrium  which  im- 
plies growth  and  gives  the  conditions  of  further  growth. 


INDEX. 


Adams,  H.,  209. 

Addams,  J.,  214. 

Administration  of  law,  316;  failures, 

319 ;  remedies,  322. 
Agriculture,  166;    land-tenure,    167; 

holdings,  171. 
Allen,  Al.  (i.  V.,  37. 
American  Society,  5. 
Amos,  S.,  40. 
Amusements,  79. 
Andrew,  Gov.,  51. 
Andrews,  E.  B.,  178,  403. 
Argyle,  Duke  of,  41. 
Atkinson,  E.,  227. 


Bagehot,  W.,  35, 130. 

Baker,  C.  W.,  368,  372,  373,  407,  408, 

H3. 
Balfour,  A.  J.,  97. 
Bemis,  E.  W.,  241,  417. 
Bonham,  -J.  M.,  388,407. 
Booth,  I'll.,  215. 


Browning.  I;..  71,  95. 
Bryce,  J.,  98. 
Burke,  I-:.,  :>7. 
Bushnell,  H.,  46. 


Cabinet  system,  457. 
Capital,  223. 
Charities,  .'541. 
Children,  relation,  43. 
Cities,  growth,  208;  social   results, 
210;  .-\  ils,  '-'i  i ;  remedies,  216. 

(.  i\  icS,  2.S9  ;   ci\  ics  and  ethics,  491. 


Clifford,  Professor,  519. 

<  'odirication,  327. 

Colin,  G.,  419. 

Commerce,  205. 

Commissions,  367. 

Competition,  145 ;  functions,  148 ; 
limitations,  152  :  asocial  law,  163. 

Co-operation,  250. 

Corporations,  365  ;  restraint,  366,  412. 

Corruption,  463. 

Crime,  322,  344. 

Currency,  quality,  278;  quantity, 
283. 

Customs,  nature,  33  ;  purpose,  34  ; 
divisions,  37 ;  social  customs, 
37  :  civic,  83  ;  religious,  91 ;  cus- 
toms and  reform,  96. 

D. 

Dabney,  W.  D.,  386,  390. 

Delille,  E.,  108. 

Dexter,  S.,  258. 

Dike,  S.  W..  61. 

Discrimination,  goods, 379;  persons, 

387  ;  places,  389. 
Distribution,  220  ;   four  classes,  222; 

effect     of     better     distribution, 

228  ;   principles,  271. 
Divorce, 59;  causes  of  Increase,  Gl  ; 

e\  ils,  68  ;    remedies.  69. 
Duties,  new  duties  in  the  slate.  364  ; 

of  citizens,  497  ;  of  rulers,  499. 
Dwight,  Th.  \\\,  409. 

E. 
Economics,  119;   relation  to  Sociol- 
ogy,   121  ;  postulates,   130;  divis- 
ions, 166;  relation  to  Ethics,  484. 


547 


548 


INDEX. 


Edwards,  Miss,  175. 

Education  by  the  state,  351 ;  duty, 
352  ;  ends,  355  ;  in  morals,  357  ; 
in  religion,  358. 

Elective  system,  458. 

Ely,  R.  T.,  176,  427. 

English  society,  5. 

Environment,  17. 

Equality,  307. 

Ethics,  481 ;  ethical  law,  481  ;  two 
elements,  482 ;  relation  to  Cus- 
toms, 484  ;  to  Economics,  484 ;  to 
Civics,  491  ;  to  religion,  521. 

Evolution  in  spiritual  life,  511 ;  in 
religion,  514;  in  society,  527 
postulates,  528;  evidence,  529 
first  law,  531 ;  second  law,  533 
third  law,  534  ;  fourth  law,  536 
fifth  law,  537;  sixth  law,  538 
seventh  law,  540. 

Exchange,  276 ;  currency,  278. 


Facts  of  attainment,  14. 

Family,  37 ;  parts,  38  ;  school  of  so- 
cial relations,  44. 

Field,  D.  D.,  324,  326. 

Foster,  E.  C,  345. 

Freedom,  231. 

Freights,  nature,  381  ;  charges,  382  ; 
classification,  383;  fluctuation, 
386. 

Frye,  "vT.  P.,  206. 

Functions  of  the  state,  297. 

G. 

Galton,  F.,  20. 

Gas  supply,  416. 

George,  H.,  181,  266. 

G  iff  en,  R.,  226,  263,  265. 

Oilman,  >T.  P.,  257. 

Gladden,  W.,  110. 

God,  growth  in  the  idea,  506  ;  in  the 

conception,  509. 
Gronlund,  G.,  177,  228. 


Hadley,  H.  A.  T.,  251. 
Hale,  W.  B.,  213. 
Harris,  W.  T.,  354. 
Hart,  A.  B.,  208. 
Hauls,  long  and  short,  393. 
Holdings,  171. 
Holmes,  G.  K.,  413. 
Hours  of  labor,  199. 
Hudson,  J.  F.,  407. 
Huxley,  Professor,  520. 


Immortality,  523. 

Individualism,  217,  231,  304,  328,  418. 

Influences  operative  on  organic 
forces,  16. 

Inheritance,  forms,  19 ;  things  in- 
volved, 21. 

International  law,  474. 

Interstate  Commerce  Commission, 
367,  421. 

Ives,  Win.  H.,  423. 


Jukes,  348. 

Justice,  in  distribution,  221  ;  in  the 
state,  306  ;  in  administration, 
337  ;  connection  with  Ethics,  493 ; 
its  development,  495. 


Kidd,  B.,  257,  522. 
Kinglake,  A.  W.,  104. 


Labor,  224. 

Labor-movement,  236  ;  history,  236 ; 

gains,  237;  evils,  245. 
Laclaire,  256. 
Law,   divisions,   311;    judicial,   313; 

statute,    315  ;    relations    of   the 

two,  316;    administration,    316; 

failures,    319  ;     remedies,    321  ; 

criminal  law,  322;    uncertainty, 

336. 
Law  and  order  leagues,  338. 
Lawyer,  duties,  329. 


INDEX. 


549 


Lecky,  W.  E.  H.,  60, 104,  169,  170,  193, 

106,  193,  218,  330,  333,  424,  453. 
Liberty,  307. 
Licenses,  445. 
Lilly,  W.  S.,  108,  113,  519. 
Lloyd,  II.  D.,  247,  371,  400. 
Local  option,  337. 

M. 

Malthus,  law,  125. 

Management,  224;  conflict  with  la- 
bor, 243. 

Manners,  76. 

Manufacture,  191 ;  changes  induced, 
193. 

Marriage,  40. 

McCook,  J.  J.,  464. 

Miller,  Judge,  422. 

Mommsen,  T.,  39,  168. 

Morrison,  I-'..  417. 

Morrison,  W.  I).,  345,  346. 

Movable  equilibrium,  28,  305,309. 

Municipal  law,  313. 

N. 

National  type  and  external  cir- 
cumstances, 24  ;  struggle  be- 
tween them,  26. 

Negro  problem,  74. 

Newton,  R.  II.,  200. 

Nurture  and  the  Household,  43. 


o. 


(  (pen  market,  145. 
Owen,  I;.,  250. 

P. 

Parents,  relation  to  children,  41. 

Parties,  political,  153;  transfer  of 
power,  456;  evils,  450;  corrup- 
tion, 463  ;  third  party,  463 ;  rem- 
edies, 172. 

Patents,  IM. 

Pauperism,  340  :  causes,  346. 

Peabody,  V.  G.,253. 

Periods  in  development  of  the  state, 
302. 

Perry,  A.  I,.,  326. 


Platform,  100. 

Playfair,  Sir  L.,  193,  201,  207,  264. 

Pollock,  F.,  324,  325. 

Pools,  386. 

Postulates  of  Political  Economy,  130; 
limitations  of  first  postulate, 
131  ;  failures,  135  ;  second  postu- 
late, 138  ;  third  postulate,  140. 

Press,  101. 

Profit-sharing,  254. 

Protection,  141,  276,  441,  445. 

Prothero,  R.  E.,  167,  170,  171. 

Public  opinion,  100. 

Public  welfare,  230. 

Pulpit,  functions,  524. 

Purity,  39. 

It. 
Rae,  J.,  200. 
Railways,  why  attract  attention,  367  ; 

wrongs  to  stockholders,  375;   to 

the  public,  379. 
Reform,  98;  instruments,  100. 
Religion,  13, 505  ;  public  instruction, 

358  ;  organic  facts,513  ;  customs, 

518  :  Economics,  518 ;  Civics,  519; 

Ethics,  521. 
Rent,  122,  223. 
Rightfulness  of  the  state,  292  ;  tests, 

2:1:.. 
Rogers,  J.  E.  T.,  85,  121,  123,200,423. 


S.i\  tngs-banks,  259. 

Saving  and  Loan  Associations,  258. 

Seligman,  E.  R.  A.,  432.  434,449. 

Shearman,  Th.  G.,  182,  269,  423. 

Siegfried,  A.  II. ,  110. 

Single  tax,  181. 

Smart,  W.,  213. 

Socialism,  175. 

Sociology,  definition,  8 ;  what  it  em- 
braces,  9  ;  subdivisions,  10. 

Spencer,  11. ,  308. 

Standard  nil  Co.,  160,  106. 

state,  rightfulness,  290;  tests,  2:1:.; 
functions,  297  ;  periods  of  devel- 
opment, 301. 


550 


INDEX. 


Stephen,  L.,  70. 

Stickney,  A.  B.,  368,  369,374,385,392, 

394,  395,  397,  407. 
Street  railroads,  416. 
Strikes,  245. 

Subjection  of  women,  46. 
Suffering  in  the  world,  510. 
Sweating  process,  265. 

T. 

Taussig,  F.  W.,  261. 

Taxation,  injustice,  422  ;  principles, 
424;  rich  and  poor,  427  ;  second- 
ary principles,  430;  forms,  432; 
real  estate,  432;  personal  prop- 
erty, 434;  income  tax,  436;  in- 
heritance, 439;  poll  tax,  440; 
customs,  441  ;  excises,  443  ;  li- 
censes, 444  :  alien  interests,  445  ; 
England,  449  ;  "United  States,  450. 

Telegraph,  420. 

Tenure  of  land,  107. 

Terminals,  395. 

Trusts,  144  :  nature,  402  :  causes,  403 ; 
gains,  405;  losses,  406;  remedies, 
409. 


V. 
Variety  in  social  growth,  22. 
Van  Etten,  1.  M.,  267. 

W. 

Wage-fund,  142. 

Wages-system,  232  ;  evils,  233. 

Walker,  A.  F.,  375. 

Walker,  F.  A.,  126,  148,  269,  424,  427. 

War,  475. 

Warner,  A.  G.,  343,  397,  418. 

Water-supply,  416. 

Wells,  I).   A..   150,  157,  194,  197,  198, 

207,  262,  405,  442. 
W.-st.  M.,  439. 
Wines,  F.  H.,  348. 
Women,  rights,  47:    limitation,  48; 

growth,  50;  political  rights,  51; 

objections,  54. 
Woods,  R.  A.,  237,  251,417. 
Workmen,  gains,  261. 
Wright,  C.  D.,  50,  67,  262. 


Young,  A.,  174. 


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Part  III.,  The  Weakness  of  Socialism.  Part  IV.,  The  Golden  Mean,  or 
Practicable  Social  Reform.  By  Richard  T.  Ely,  Ph.D.,  LL.D.,  Pro- 
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